Graduate School

Tao Hong, a second-year Ph.D. student in interdisciplinary materials science, and Hari Srinivasan, an incoming Ph.D. student in neuroscience, have been named to the 2022 cohort of the Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship Program for New Americans. This merit-based graduate award for immigrants and children of immigrants provides 30 fellows annually with up to $90,000 in funding to support their graduate studies. Read More

Sixteen engineering graduate students have been awarded the highly competitive government-funded National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. Three engineering undergraduate students also received NSF fellowships. Read More

Vanderbilt University will honor the Class of 2022 with a series of events May 12-13. Reid Hoffman, an accomplished entrepreneur, executive, investor and philanthropist who has played an integral role in building many of today’s leading consumer technology businesses, will deliver the Graduates Day address to 2022 graduates and their families. Read More

Applications are open through June 15 for the Neurodiversity Inspired Science and Engineering graduate trainee program. The NISE program engages students across STEM disciplines in the development, deployment and commercialization of future of work at the human technology frontier (FW-HTF) approaches and devices that support neurodiverse individuals, and/or that are inspired by their abilities. Read More

Wond’ry program participants and MS Finance students Max Mona and Adam Jace headed to the University of South Carolina where their startup—focused on democratizing environmental, social and governance data—won first place among SEC founded companies. Read More

Collaboration across seven laboratories, in five institutions, across three countries and led by Vanderbilt researchers addresses fundamental questions about the organization and evolution of the human brain. Est. reading time: 1.75 mins. Read More

A new index designed by researchers at Vanderbilt University shows a steady erosion of trust in American political institutions over the past 40 years, with it hitting its lowest point in 2017 after racial unrest in Charlottesville, Virginia. Read More

Vanderbilt University’s graduate programs showed continued strength in the 2023 "U.S. News & World Report" Best Graduate Schools rankings, with five of Vanderbilt’s graduate and professional schools falling within the top 25. Read More

To shoot a basketball with precision requires countless hours of practice, usually under the watchful eye of a coach providing guidance on the right mechanics of each shot. Now, thanks to new research from Vanderbilt University, players may soon be able to use artificial intelligence technology to work on those same principles on their own.  Read More

Vanderbilt University faculty and staff are invited to donate their gently used professional and business casual clothing to the Graduate School Career Closet. Read More

Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs C. Cybele Raver has joined her peers at institutions within the Southeastern Conference to establish the SEC Emerging Scholars Program for doctoral and postdoctoral students. The program serves as a pathway and source of mentorship for historically underrepresented graduate students across the SEC to prepare for tenured faculty positions in higher education.  Read More

Vanderbilt and Chalmers University of Technology are teaming up to build a self-driving biological laboratory that uses microfluidics, artificial intelligence and machine learning to create a third-generation robot scientist that designs and conducts the massive number of experiments needed to fully characterize cellular signals and pathways and optimize biotechnologies. Read More

Josh Caldwell and graduate student Joseph Matson are part of a team that has discovered how asymmetric light-matter interactions may enable new ways to guide and process optical signals on chips and design compact infrared optical components. Read More

Science’s influence on pop culture is undeniable, and the reverse is equally important. Research led by Jay Clayton, the first literature professor to ever receive funding from the NIH, shows that films portray genetic science as risky far more often than television shows. Read More

Associate Professor of Nursing and Pediatrics Terrah Akard, a nationally recognized nurse scientist in pediatric palliative care and end-of-life support, has been named associate dean for academic affairs for the Graduate School. Read More

Second-year Ph.D. student Mayna Nguyen recently combined a longtime hobby with her study of biomedical optics with dazzling results: a playable laser harp that embodies both her love for the instrument and her research into photonics. Read More

Audrey Arner, a first-year Ph.D. student, recently earned a pilot research grant from Vanderbilt’s Evolutionary Studies Initiative to study the evolutionary mismatch hypothesis in Malaysia. The basis of the research seeks to understand how genetic characteristics that were beneficial to communities in the past could be harmful in a modern environment.   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 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

A new comprehensive data set featuring neural images from children ages 5, 7 and 9 has been made available for cross-disciplinary research purposes.  Read More