Faculty Quick Profile

Dr. Michael Matheny is passionate about combining AI technologies with a human touch. See how he’s helping improve patient care and protecting patients with implanted medical devices. Read More

Meet the researcher who pioneered ways to protect online medical data and is training the next generation to advance tech in health and protect your privacy. Read More

Gentle caress, searing burn, jolting shock. All these are possible with the elemental power of touch. Read how Shan Meltzer studies touch from the cellular level through the nervous system to the brain, to find better ways to treat pain and physical injuries. Read More

Joerg Rieger's work raises the question: What shared commitment might bind us all together, and can it be leveraged for the good of humanity? As a theologian, he looks to ancient religious traditions for solutions. Read More

RESEARCH SPARK: AI is becoming a common tool for Human Resources departments. Learn from new faculty Salvatore Falletta about the ethical lines between creepy AI analytics creative decision making. Read More

RESEARCH SPARK: Learn a key tool new faculty leader Kristina Thomas Dreifuerst is using to prepare the next generation of nurses. Read More

As far back as he can remember, Andy Schwartz has been fascinated by two things—how the brain works and how humans process natural language. Today, as director of HLAB—the Human Language Analysis Beings lab—and research associate professor in the Vanderbilt College of Connected Computing, he explores the intersection of AI, language and mental health. Read More

RESEARCH SPARK: Get to know Shekhar Bhansali, new head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and his vision for AI engineering education. Read More

When an “unsolvable” problem needs solving, put John Wikswo on the team. As director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education and University Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Molecular Physiology and Biophysics, and Physics, Wikswo is tackling questions crucial to the biotech and pharmaceutical industries, now with support from Vanderbilt's Innovation Catalyst Fund. Read More

RESEARCH SPARK: Meet new faculty Maya Singhal and see how their research could help us understand the impact of diverse community dynamics. Read More

When bacterial pathogens enter our bodies, they’ve got one goal—hunt for food to multiply. And during the process, they make us sick. Eric Skaar, Ernest W. Goodpasture Professor of Pathology and director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology and Inflammation, is uncovering how pathogens compete with healthy microbes for essential nutrients. Read More

Tracy Sharpley-Whiting's research explores the interior lives of historical figures whose artistic influence shaped their worlds. Her impressive accomplishments led to her recent election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. Read More

Mariam Adam puts a priority in her work on innovative musical collaborations that benefit her students while building a legacy to be discovered by future generations. The assistant professor of clarinet is a fierce advocate for music education who has performed with such greats as Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock. Read More

Understanding how proteins get from point A to point B is top of mind for Stephanie Wankowicz, assistant professor of molecular physiology and biophysics and principal investigator at the Wankowicz lab. She conducts research on how entropy, a measure of the tendency toward disorder or randomness within a system, shifts when a protein binds to a drug or another protein. Now, her work is being shared through the diffUSE project, a new multi-institutional collaboration focused on reshaping the future of structural biology by moving beyond traditional “snapshot” views of proteins to reveal their full dynamic motions. Read More

As Cornelius Vanderbilt Professor of Physics and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Julia Velkovska studies the tiny particles that form our universe. She focuses on how nuclear matter behaves when confronted with extreme density and temperatures (think trillions of degrees)—similar to the conditions existing microseconds after the big bang, right as the universe was starting to take shape. Just this year, Velkovska and her team of physicists were awarded the 2025 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics, along with 13,508 colleagues across four landmark CERN experiments. The prize honors decades of work expanding our understanding of the physical universe. Read More

Dean Pamela Jeffries of the Vanderbilt University School of Nursing conducts research around innovative instruction using technology and simulations that give student nurses a way to begin learning how to make clinical decisions without putting patients at risk. Read More

Charles G. Finney Professor of Homiletics and Liturgics Eunjoo Kim does research that focuses on new perspectives and methods of preaching and worship that are relevant to changing cultural contexts. Read More