Arts And Science

Vanderbilt Divinity School and the College of Arts and Science will honor one of the university's most revered alumni with the launch of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements. Read More

Not a moonshot: Karan Jani explores possibility of lunar observatory to better understand fundamental physics, astronomy and cosmology Est. reading time: 2 mins. Read More

Public opinion polls ahead of the 2020 election were the most inaccurate in a generation, according to Josh Clinton, Abby and Jon Winkelried Chair and professor of political science, who recently served as chair of a special task force convened by the American Association for Public Opinion Research specifically to evaluate polling. Read More

Vanderbilt University will join with many community partners to pay tribute to the life and Nashville legacy of Rep. John Lewis on July 16 and 17 with the formal dedication of Rep. John Lewis Way and a public celebration at Ryman Auditorium. Read More

Carter Philips, BA’65, professor of classics, emeritus, and university marshal at Vanderbilt Commencement for more than two decades, died July 8. He was 78. Read More

The School of Medicine Basic Sciences brought together a biologist, a Christian theologist, a philosopher and an astrophysicist June 17 for a lab-to-table conversation exploring their views and academic perspectives on the origins of life. Read More

U.S. Rep. David Price, who has represented the fourth district of North Carolina through seven White House administrations, shared insights about the changes he has witnessed in Congress during an online discussion with Vanderbilt political scientists Alan Wiseman and Larry Bartels on June 28. Read More

Led by Vanderbilt astrophysicists, researchers work with data from thousands of galaxies to investigate the origins and physics of black hole binaries in nearby galaxies. Est. reading time: 2 mins. Read More

Dixon McDonald, BA'11, and teammates Jimmy Carroll, Todd Hooper and Jono Mawson rowed approximately 3,000 miles from the Canary Islands, just off the coast of Africa, to the Caribbean nation of Antigua in a boat only 28 feet long and a little more than 3 feet wide last December for the 2020 Talisker Whisky Atlantic Challenge. Read More

NSF funding will support the development of new techniques to search for signatures of exotic interstellar phenomena. Read More

Vanderbilt University has become the newest member of the Universities Studying Slavery consortium as part of its reinvigorated commitment to confront racial injustice while working toward a more inclusive and welcoming campus community. Read More

Divisive party politics continue to dominate attitudes among Tennessee residents on key social issues, including the state’s response to COVID-19, willingness to get vaccinated and questions about whether the 2020 presidential election was “stolen,” according to the latest Vanderbilt University poll. Read More

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