Arts And Science

The Vanderbilt University Fine Arts Gallery presents "Skyscraper Gothic," a close, interdisciplinary look at the stylistic development of the tall office building, Feb. 14 through May 22. 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

Vanderbilt University is one of 14 institutions awarded the 2022 Beckman Scholars Program from the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation, receiving $146,000 to renew Vanderbilt’s program through 2025. The award will support a total of six Beckman Scholars over the next three years, with two scholars named each year. Read More

Kelly Holley-Bockelmann, Stevenson Professor of Astrophysics, has received the 2022 Mentor Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The award is for individuals who have mentored significant numbers of underrepresented students who are working toward doctorates in STEM. Read More

A poem by Mark Jarman, Centennial Professor of English, emeritus, whose most recent books are the poetry collection The Heronry and the essay collection Dailiness: Essays on Poetry. “The Arrow Paradox” appeared in the June 2021 issue of The Atlantic. Read More

Fourteen undergraduates and two graduate students represented Vanderbilt University in Glasgow, Scotland, as official delegates to the United Nations international climate change negotiations—dubbed COP26. Read More

The intersection of science and society is the foundation of a multi-institutional collaboration of students and faculty in a virtual and physical art exhibit titled "Nested Knowledge: Disentangling History, Truth and Race in STEM Experiences." The exhibit can be experienced online and at the Wond’ry, Vanderbilt’s Innovation Center, through February 2022 in honor of Black History Month. Read More

Assistant Professor of Biological Sciences Maulik Patel and his lab have received a Pilot Research Grant from the Vanderbilt Evolutionary Studies Initiative to study reproduction and aging. Read More

Melvin Duane Joesten, an emeritus chemistry professor and co-founder of Vanderbilt Student Volunteers for Science, died Jan. 17 in Nashville after a brief illness. He was 89. Read More

Virtual learning for Vanderbilt debate students opened doors halfway around the world this spring, as a friendly virtual competition with the Rwanda National Debate Team brought deeper opportunities to learn about that nation’s genocide in 1994.  Read More

Vanderbilt Spanish and Portuguese Ph.D. student Elvira Aballi Morell is leading an effort to uplift and inspire Nashville’s Latinx creatives through a trans-institutional and community driven project, HEART–Unifying Communities through Language and Textile Art. Read More

New research from Sandra Rosenthal, Jack and Pamela Egan Professor of Chemistry and professor of pharmacology and chemical and biomolecular engineering, suggests that the rate of change in solar insolation—that is, the amount of solar radiation that reaches the ground over a specified time in a given location—has a greater impact on these depressive disorders than routine seasonal changes in sunlight. Read More

Vanderbilt students are invited to express how they feel about unity and democracy through a new poetry contest. The Vanderbilt Project on Unity and American Democracy is conducting the contest in partnership with Vanderbilt’s English department and MFA program in creative writing. The theme is “What unity through American democracy means to me.” Read More

Photography by Marc Olivier Le Blanc The opening poem in Focal Point, the debut collection by Jenny Qi, BA’11, navigates the fraught emotional space between a loving daughter’s grief over her mother’s death and a scientist’s clear-eyed inquiry into the disease-cancer-that caused it. Qi writes of “nights at a microscope in… Read More

Photos by Richard CartwrightIllustrations by Michelle Pereira Cinematographer Alicia Robbins, BS’01, never planned on working behind the scenes. At Vanderbilt, she aspired to a career in broadcast journalism, appearing in spots for Vanderbilt Television and taking every class related to television and film she could find. Everything changed when her… Read More

Vanderbilt, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the University of Virginia and international collaborators merge breakthrough experiments and theory of nanomaterial behavior to usher in the next wave of technology. Est. reading time: 3.5 mins. Read More

Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs C. Cybele Raver joins six others at Vanderbilt as 2021 fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society. Read More

When Joseph Sexton’s friend died by suicide in high school, Sexton channeled his grief into a research quest to better understand depressive behaviors.  The Georgia native started studying the systems and molecular neuroscience behind mood. By his senior year of high school, he was doing research at Georgia… Read More

Students in the Glacial Geology class took their research to new levels of immersion, collecting soil and rock samples at an elevation of 9,000 feet in the Sawatch Mountain Range of Colorado. Their research helps show the movement of glaciers, ultimately giving clues about the impact of climate change. Read More

Robert O’Dell, Distinguished Research Professor of Physics and Astronomy, has been named a 2022 fellow of the American Astronomical Society for extraordinary achievement and service to the field of astronomy. He is among 23 fellows being inducted into the AAS this year. Read More