Earth And Environmental Sciences

By Jenna Somers Climate Champions Fellows touring Vanderbilt’s campus South Asian university students who won Climate Champions Fellowships through the Student Society for Climate Change Awareness’s Climate Tank Accelerator visited Vanderbilt University in February, supported by a U.S. State Department grant. The fellows were from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan,… Read More

Vanderbilt University, led by Professor Ralf Bennartz, will lead a NASA satellite mission investigating Earth's high-altitude ice clouds, backed by a robust grant of $37 million. This endeavor, leveraging the university's climate research expertise, will provide opportunities for student involvement and bolsters Vanderbilt's position in global climate research. Read More

In a new innovative study conducted by the Vanderbilt Climate, Health, and Energy Equity Lab, four undergraduate students and three faculty researchers identified a new approach to reduce the health inequalities of energy cost burdens and greenhouse gas emissions. Read More

Thirteen innovative projects across seven colleges and schools have been selected for the spring 2024 round of Seeding Success internal grants. The Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Innovation announced the recipient list on May 31. Read More

Jonathan Gilligan was awarded admittance to the American Geophysical Union’s 2024-2025 Voices for Science program to hone their communication and advocacy skills to increase understanding and support of science. The program trains scientists to communicate the value of Earth and space science to key decision makers, journalists, and the public, with the hope of solving some of the most critical climate-related challenges facing society. Read More

Tucked behind the 6 Magnolia Building on Vanderbilt’s Peabody Campus is what might look to some like a lush garden of weeds. In reality, it’s a strategic Native Meadow full of pollinator-friendly plants. Since its inception, the meadow has flourished, and many faculty, staff and students have found ways to collaborate and interact with the space, thought of as a ‘living lab.’ Read More

The Women's Center presents awards in three categories each year: the Margaret Cuninggim Women's Center Leadership Award, the Mentoring Award and the Mary Jane Werthan Award. This spring, the Margaret Cuninggim Women’s Center named five people from the Vanderbilt community as recipients of its annual awards. Read More

By Jenna Somers Heidi Carlone A three-year, nearly $1.3 million grant from the National Science Foundation supports a trans-institutional research team at Vanderbilt University investigating an innovative approach to STEM education that could help young people develop STEM identities and agency amid climate anxiety. Children around the world… Read More

Jonathan Gilligan has received a Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program award for the 2023–24 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board. 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

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

Looking at prehistoric organisms allows Simon Darroch and his students to describe how, when and why complex life evolved on this planet. Their work is a piece of the puzzle in understanding how likely it is that we’ll find complex life beyond Earth. Read More

Vanderbilt University, which already has taken significant steps in its commitment to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050, has joined the Race to Zero—Universities and Colleges coalition. At the same time, Assistant Professor Leah Dundon and 14 students are participating in international climate change negotiations. Read More

Vanderbilt faculty Jonathan Gilligan and Janey Camp will work with researchers from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville and involved entities to propose a large-scale research network with the goal of improving interrelated electric, transportation and communications services in areas with infrastructure served by the Tennessee Valley Authority. Read More

Simulating controversial responses to climate change, researchers illustrate how a small group of nations may influence climate change in the decades to come. Est. reading time: 2 mins. 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

Chemical signatures and microscopic wear patterns in dental fossils show that the diet of sabertooth cats included mammoths. Read More

Dental analysis from Larisa DeSantis shows that polar bears may not be able to compete for food sources as their environment melts away. Read More

Vanderbilt paleoclimatologists deploy first calcium isotope analysis of North American stalagmite to show how past weather extremes may predict events in California. Read More

Isotope analysis of ancient Peruvian teeth gives anthropologists a clearer image of how cooperating societies function. Read More