Research

Svalbard, Norway, a cluster of islands north of the Arctic Circle, is rich with paradox. A former international whaling base and subsequent site of extractive coal mining, Svalbard is now home to the Global Seed Vault, which stores more than one million seed duplicates to safeguard the world’s food supply. Described as a “geopolitical unicorn,” Svalbard is, at once, an open haven for artists and researchers seeking to generate new knowledge and climate interventions by learning from its landscapes, as well as a target for international meddling because of its prime access to satellite data from above and rare earth minerals below. Site of both extraction and regeneration, attracting both a spirit of collaborative inquiry and pursuits of global dominance, Svalbard’s paradoxical singularity inspired Vanderbilt faculty Jana Harper, Lutz Koepnick and Jonathan Rattner to embark on a three-week research trip in summer 2025 to witness its rapidly changing landscapes and experiment with artistic methods to address the effects of planetary overheating.   Read More

Vanderbilt University has announced its fall 2025 recipients of the Seeding Success, Scaling Success and Rapid-Advancement MicroGrant Program awards, providing internal funding to help faculty launch new research directions, strengthen proposals and compete for major external grants. Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich Toddlerhood is a critical window for developmental interventions. But up to 75 percent of children born with cleft lip or palate don’t receive the speech-language support they may need until grade school. This lag puts them at risk of challenges with communication, social… Read More

By Jenna Somers A new study finds that a culturally sustaining treatment can help nearly half of young Spanish-speaking children with early language delays improve their skills significantly—five times more than standard care alone. Led by researchers at Vanderbilt University Peabody College of education and human development, the… Read More

The VCL Scholars serve as an integral part of the Vanderbilt Center for Languages' mission of fostering interdisciplinary work. Applicants may propose a program of research for publication, conference presentation, or the creation of a new academic initiative. The Vanderbilt Center for Languages (VCL) is particularly interested in funding proposals that generate knowledge that benefits a broad constituency. A $3500 salary supplement is provided to all Scholars.  Read More

Vanderbilt University announced seven recipients of the Innovation Catalyst Fund awards for the October 2025 cycle. The awards offer strategic pre-seed funding to help faculty across a wide range of disciplines turn promising research concepts into tangible solutions that address fundamental societal needs.  Read More

In 2021, Kathleen Seabolt, executive director, Vanderbilt Child & Family Center , founded the Owls kindergarten as a pilot program at The Acorn School, which provides care for young children of Vanderbilt University faculty and staff. Beginning in the fall of 2026, Owls will migrate across campus to join the Susan Gray School, Vanderbilt’s inclusive pre-school that is part of Vanderbilt Peabody College of education and human development. Read More

Research into combating cocaine addiction has been limited by the difficulty in structuring accurate animal models; standard practice relies on implanting IV catheters that the animals can use to self-dose. Now Assistant Professor Cody Siciliano's lab has devised a method that more closely mimics cocaine use in humans—effectively, a way for the animals to snort cocaine. This makes the animal model more analogous to human experience, and it reduces surgical and intravenous procedures for the animals. "This model provides a powerful framework for linking motivated drug use with real-time neural activity, offering new opportunities to study the circuitry underlying reinforcement and decision-making," Siciliano said. Read More

When people choose from a large set of options, there is likely one that aligns closely with their particular preferences. When there are fewer options, their choice is less likely to reflect a strong opinion—they're just choosing the one that is any amount closer to what they think. This can be misinterpreted, researchers say, as deep enthusiasm. And it can lead to polarization, because people tend to not consider how many options were available when forming an opinion about others' choices. Read More

Vanderbilt investigators are invited to submit pre-proposals for the 2026 NIH S10 Shared and High-End Instrumentation Grant programs, which support the purchase of state-of-the-art shared research equipment for NIH-funded research. Pre-proposals are required for institutional review and approval before submission to the NIH, with a university deadline of April 1 ahead of the NIH’s June 1 deadline. Read More

Vanderbilt University’s Center for Global Democracy is the new U.S. institutional home for the Comparative Study of Election Surveys, a leading global resource for understanding elections and democratic governance. This move strengthens Vanderbilt’s leadership in global democracy research, building on three decades of international collaborations and the CSES’s reputation as the premier source of comparative electoral survey data. Read More

He leads groundbreaking work creating robotic tools to make surgeries safer. Now, with a passion for partnership, see how Robert Webster is carving a path for others to take their life-changing innovations and turn them into reality. Read More

Tracing policy decisions from early America to today, the reports reveal how long-standing choices continue to shape access and outcomes for families. Press Contact: Sydne Lewis, 615-343-9946, sydne.lewis@vanderbilt.edu The Prenatal-to-3 Policy Impact Center at Vanderbilt University published the first installment in a series of reports, Social Policy… Read More

By Jenna Somers Dean Camilla P. Benbow David Lubinski (Vanderbilt) Camilla Benbow and David Lubinski have won the Dunnette Prize from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP), for their scholarship on talent identification and talent… Read More

New drug discovery institute brings together AI, genomics, systems biology and translational research to accelerate cures for major diseases. Read More

Field work led by Associate Professor Tiffany Fracchia recently solved an 80-year-old mystery for the family of a missing World War II soldier. In 2022 and 2023, Fracchia and her students excavated remains from the site of a 1944 B-17G crash near Neron, France. They were later identified by the Department of Defense as U.S. Army Air Force 1st Lt. Gerard J. Melofchik of New York, and his family finally held a memorial for him in November. “Hearing that we were able to bring some peace and answers to another military family … was really rewarding for me,” said Alyssa Bolster, BA’22. Read More

Law Professor J.B. Ruhl will spend four weeks at the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Center in 2027, developing ways cities can adapt to climate change. The center, which has hosted notable leaders like Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and author Maya Angelou, works to inspire collaboration that transcends political affiliations, professions and national borders. The residency is a joint effort with the UCLA School of Law and the Bren School of Environmental Science and Management. Read More

Cells lining crucial structures in the kidney are full of mitochondria—parts of the cell that help it do its job. The cost of doing that job, though, can be damage to the mitochondria, which then cripples the cells and leads to poor kidney function. Researchers at Vanderbilt University Medical Center have found that the protein Rac1 kicks cell repair into high gear to help the body remove and replace damaged mitochondria. Their work was recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences; Assistant Professor Fabian Bock is among the paper’s authors. Read More

By Jennifer Kiilerich and Krystal Schmidt On a rainy November afternoon in a North Nashville classroom, students who once struggled in math periodically shouted out “zearned it,” receiving stickers or candy from their teacher as they hit milestones in the math program of the same name.  Sherrilyn Dovi,… Read More

Whether Major Jackson is teaching, writing or critiquing, at the center of his work is a voracious hunger for artful language—underpinned by a commitment to painting the quotidian in new and unexpected ways. Read More