Arts And Science Research

Associate Professor of Anthropology T.S. Harvey has been awarded a Ford Foundation Senior Fellowship—a first for a Vanderbilt faculty member—for his environmental justice and public health work in Guatemala. Harvey is one of only two 2022 recipients of the senior fellowship, which is intended to support research that advances and contributes knowledge to sciences, engineering and medicine. Read More

Governments of lower- and middle-income countries increasingly are turning to public-private partnerships to operate schools as an alternative to traditional public schools. Vanderbilt professors Felipe Barrera-Osorio and Andrew Dustan have received a one-year NSF grant in excess of $400,000 to lead an interdisciplinary study on the quality of these partnership schools in Bogotá, Colombia. Read More

Vanderbilt researchers have developed an active machine learning approach to predict the effects of tumor variants of unknown significance, or VUS, on sensitivity to chemotherapy. Characterizing VUS can maximize clinical care and precision medicine for each patient. Read More

David Weintraub’s commitment to equal opportunity in astronomy inspired his latest book, The Sky Is for Everyone. The autobiographical essays by women who broke down barriers and changed the face of modern astronomy include a chapter by alum Yilen Gómez Maqueo Chew. Read More

Amanda Lea, assistant professor of biological sciences, has been named to the 2022–24 cohort of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Azrieli Global Scholars in recognition of her outstanding early-career research and interdisciplinary work. Lea’s research interests span evolutionary biology, genomics and human health.  Read More

Vanderbilt and Arizona State University microbiologists explore the effects of feast and famine cycles on E. coli, providing insight into how the bacterial communities that reside in our guts, with our crops, in lakes and streams, and beyond become so complex. Read More

A team comprising Assistant Professor of Psychology André Bastos, Associate Professor of Psychology and Associate Professor of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences Alexander Maier and Ph.D. candidate Jacob A. Westerberg is among three international research teams that have won the opportunity to pursue their exploration of brain function at the Allen Brain Observatory. Read More

Mosquito-borne diseases like malaria represent an ongoing global health crisis of (literally) biblical proportions. LJ Zwiebel has identified the biological factors that help female mosquitos mate, suck blood and sense environmental threats. Est. reading time: 1.5 mins. Read More

Amanda Lea, assistant professor of biological sciences, has been named a 2022 Searle Scholar, an honor bestowed on 15 exceptional young faculty in the biomedical sciences and chemistry. Lea will receive $300,000 in flexible funding to support her work over the next three years. Read More

Keivan Stassun, Stevenson Professor of Physics and Astronomy and director of the Frist Center for Autism and Innovation, is a co-author of the study “Increasing Diversity and Inclusion in the Leadership of Competed Space Missions.” The report will be published by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine on May 18. Read More

Graduate student measures the coevolution of genes in genomes; method may fundamentally change how we identify genes with similar functions. Read More

The National Institute of Mental Health has awarded a $3.4 million grant to professor Thilo Womelsdorf to study the underlying mechanisms of action for potential drugs to regulate cognitive function and brain network activity affected in schizophrenia without debilitating side effects. Read More

Lucie Kalousová, assistant professor of medicine, health and society and of sociology, has received a two-year New to the Field Award of $114,000 from the Alzheimer’s Association. Corey Bolton, a postdoctoral fellow at the Vanderbilt Memory and Alzheimer’s Center, has been awarded a two-year, $140,000 Alzheimer’s Association Clinician Scientist Fellowship. 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

A new index designed by researchers at Vanderbilt University shows a steady erosion of trust in American political institutions over the past 40 years, with it hitting its lowest point in 2017 after racial unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia. Read More

Jacob Steenwyk, a sixth-year doctoral student studying biology in The Rokas Lab, is a recipient of the 2022 Harold M. Weintraub Graduate Student Award presented by the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. He is the second Vanderbilt student ever to receive this honor. Read More

Researchers at Vanderbilt and Arizona State University recently won a two-year, $25,000 National Endowment for the Arts research grant to support a mixed-methods study on the prevalence of arts internships and their role in students’ transition from college to careers. Read More

Vanderbilt and Chalmers University of Technology are teaming up to build a self-driving biological laboratory that uses microfluidics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a third-generation robot scientist that designs and conducts the massive number of experiments needed to fully characterize cellular signals and pathways and optimize biotechnologies. Read More

A team of astronomers has made the discovery of a lifetime that will help answer burning questions on the evolution of stars. The group is led by Keivan Stassun, Evolutionary Studies Initiative member and Stevenson Professor of Physics and Astronomy. Read More

Over the past decade, Larisa DeSantis, paleontologist and associate professor of biological sciences, has worked with a team of former Vanderbilt undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral scholars and experts from across the globe to show how species can be both generalized at the species level and specialized individually—a probable key to their success. Read More