Michael Bess

The Vanderbilt Innovation Catalyst Fund, launched in 2023, bridges the gap between academic research and real-world applications by supporting projects with commercial and societal potential. To date, the fund has completed six award cycles, distributing 39 grants to VU and VUMC awardees across diverse disciplines. Read More

During the coming decades—probably a lot sooner than most people realize—the next great wave of technological change will wash over our lives. Its impact will be similar in sweep and rapidity to the advent of computers, cellphones and the Web, but this time around, it is not our gadgets that will be transformed—it is we ourselves, our bodies, our minds. Read More

Watch “Justice and Identity in a Bioengineered Society,” by Michael Bess, Chancellor’s Professor of History. One of the earliest biomedical engineering programs in the United States, Vanderbilt’s Department of Biomedical Engineering is celebrating its 45th anniversary as a program and its 25th anniversary as a department in the School of… Read More

Students at Vanderbilt’s Osher Lifelong Learning Institute are proof that learning never stops Mary Pat Silveira (left), a retired United Nations official and instructor for the winter term course "The Other UN," speaks with Osher Lifelong Learning Institute members. (Joe Howell/Vanderbilt) Tucked away in a second-floor meeting space at The Commons Center,… Read More

Watch video of Mike Vandenbergh, professor of law and director, Climate Change Research Network; Michael Bess, Chancellor’s Professor of History; and Beth Conklin, associate professor of anthropology, speaking at the Dec. 8, 2010, Thinking Out of the (Lunch) Box. The financial crisis and difficult economic times have shifted the cultural spotlight away from global… Read More