Arts And Science

A team of Vanderbilt and Georgia State University researchers has developed publicly available resources for teaching personal geography and critical spatial inquiry. They recently launched a public website offering teaching frameworks and curricular tools for educators. Read More

Emmanuele DiBenedetto, a retired mathematics professor who made significant contributions to the understanding of partial differential equations, has died after a 15-month struggle with cancer. Read More

How do academics with diverse areas of expertise view the origins of life? A June 17 virtual discussion hosted by the School of Medicine Basic Sciences will bring together perspectives from single-cell biology, theology, space and time and metaphysical philosophy to explore the unique and common understandings among the fields. Read More

Using NASA data on solar insolation, Sandra Rosenthal has postulated that seasonal rate of change in daylight has the greatest effect on illnesses with seasonal patterns, not average levels of sunlight. (Est. reading time: 3 mins.) Read More

Nicholas S. Zeppos, Cornelius Vanderbilt Chancellor Emeritus, credits the university’s dedication to holding in-person classes last fall—and his students’ adherence to health and safety protocols—for his successful transition to full-time professor during an unprecedented year. Read More

The rise of Black women’s political participation, a study of short stories by prominent and less-familiar authors, and the history of photography are among the classes offered online this summer by Vanderbilt’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Read More

Vanderbilt graduate students Luis Bichon and Brandon Tyler Blankenship have been selected for the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research program and will pursue their research on high-energy nuclear physics at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Read More

Biological scientist discovers the third way by which bees can tell time: temperature. Est. reading time: 2 mins. Read More

The Founder’s Medalists for the Class of 2021 were announced during Commencement ceremonies May 15–16. Since 1877, Vanderbilt has awarded a gold medal to the student graduating with first honors from each of the university’s 10 schools and colleges. Read More

Among Vanderbilt’s all-time fastest swimmers in the 200-meter butterfly, Brooke Ellis is also the first CSET student to achieve highest honors. As she prepared to defend her senior honors thesis in April, Brooke Ellis could call on plenty of Vanderbilt experiences that prepared her for the moment. There was the… Read More

Nine outstanding faculty members from across the university have been selected for the 2021 cohort of Chancellor Faculty Fellows. This group is composed of highly accomplished, recently tenured faculty from a wide variety of disciplines and areas of expertise. Read More

Afro-Cuban American artist Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons and the Engine for Art, Democracy and Justice, a trans-institutional partnership that she founded at Vanderbilt University, have received prestigious awards this spring. Read More

Senior Emily Kopec is the 2021 recipient of the $25,000 Margaret Stonewall Wooldridge Hamblet Award, the Department of Art’s top student prize, and senior Cayla B. Mims is the recipient of the $10,000 Merit Award. Read More

Vanderbilt astronomers lead group that created the roadmap for studying supermassive black holes after detecting the low-frequency gravitational waves they create. Est. reading time: 2 mins. Read More

A transdisciplinary team from Vanderbilt, Soterix Medical and the U.S. Army has advanced to the finals of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Development Command’s xTechBOLT competition, where they will compete in November with four other teams for the $500,000 first-place prize. Read More

Daniel Genkins, a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of History, worked with the Data Science Institute to build a machine learning pipeline to process digitized ecclesiastical records that touch on the lives of people of African descent, both free and enslaved, in the early modern Atlantic. Read More

Bonnie J. Dow, dean of academic affairs for the College of Arts and Science and professor of communication studies, is among 10 Nashville leaders selected for a Harvard Business School leadership program focused on communities’ shared growth and prosperity. Read More

Elizabeth Chamberlain, a U.S. National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow in earth and environmental sciences, has been awarded the 2021 Dr. Richard Faas Research Prize by the International Association of Sedimentologists. Read More

Student-athlete Myra Konte was drafted in January by the North Carolina Courage—her dream team—but will delay her professional soccer career temporarily to continue her education at Vanderbilt. Read More

Presidential rhetoric expert Vanessa Beasley presents the history of the U.S. president's annual address to Congress—and what to expect in tonight's address. Read More