Arts And Science

Vanderbilt University faculty members Jane Landers, Alex Jahangir and Christopher Slobogin are scheduled to speak at “TEDxNashville: The End of Impossible” at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center Aug. 27–28. A limited number of free tickets are available, and Vanderbilt community members can get 25 percent off the price of individual general admission tickets to the event. Read More

A pair of U.S. Department of Education grants totaling $1.7 million awarded to Vanderbilt University’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies will allow for innovation in curriculum and promotion of public awareness about Latin America.  Read More

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

Paul K. Conkin, Distinguished Professor of History, Emeritus, former chair of the Department of History and author of more than 20 books on a wide range of American intellectual history, died July 23 in Nashville. Read More

Vanderbilt has named Leah Lowe, a theatre department faculty member who has developed and strengthened ties between the university and Nashville arts community, as director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy. Read More

Megan Piphus Peace, BA’14, MSF’15, is an accomplished ventriloquist and puppeteer who has performed in front of audiences across the nation, including on The Tonight Show and America’s Got Talent. In 2021, she made history as the first Black female puppeteer to work on the long-running children’s television show Sesame Street. 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

The Vanderbilt Alumni Association has welcomed a new president and two other alumni leaders to its board. Read More

A four-year longitudinal study of older LGBTQ+ people in the South is being conducted to better identify the sources of stress and resilience for this infrequently studied population. 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

Leaders of Vanderbilt’s LGBTQ+ Policy Lab have provided the first comprehensive evidence on the effects of access to legal same-sex marriage. Their efforts revealed that marriage access impacted the LGBTQ+ community positively in multiple ways. Read More

A $5 million gift from Suzanne Perot McGee, BS’86, Patrick K. McGee, BS’85, and their family to the College of Arts and Science at Vanderbilt University will establish a new center dedicated to analyzing the media, using the cutting-edge tools of data science. 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

Focusing on diet and exercise to curb childhood obesity may be counterproductive and lead to missing other root causes of becoming overweight, according to a newly released report from Vanderbilt University researchers. 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

Vanessa Beasley, BA’88, vice provost for academic affairs and dean of residential faculty, will step down on June 30 to become the next president of Trinity University in San Antonio. Read More

The integration of cinema and science is at the foundation of Vanderbilt University professor Daniel Levin’s research. Levin teaches Film and Psychology in addition to other classes that examine how cognitive science and the arts collide.  Read More