Physics

Data scientist Dave Spiegel presents a physics and astronomy colloquium, “From Exo-Worlds to Health Monitoring to Clothing Personalization,” Dec. 8. Read More

Tennessee joins California to become only the second American state memorialized in the periodic table of elements. Read More

An ambitious postdoctoral training initiative designed to prepare recently graduated doctorates for competitive academic careers will launch later this year, Chancellor Nicholas S. Zeppos announced Oct. 24. Read More

Two Vanderbilt physicists, Keivan Stassun and Kalman Varga, have been elected fellows of the American Physical Society. Read More

In part because much of their work remains classified even after 70 years, the contributions of a group of young Vanderbilt physicists to the Manhattan Project have never received the level of recognition they deserve. Read More

The provisional name for the newly discovered superheavy element 117 is "tennessine." The name was proposed by Vanderbilt nuclear physicist Joseph Hamilton to honor the state where three members of the international collaboration that made the discovery -- Vanderbilt University, Oak Ridge National Laboratory and University of Tennessee at Knoxville -- are located. Read More

The Fisk-Vanderbilt Master's-to-Ph.D. Bridge Program, which supports minority STEM graduate students, is the subject of a feature story in the Chronicle of Higher Education. Read More

Twenty-four retiring faculty members were recognized during Vanderbilt’s Commencement ceremony May 13, when the university honored their years of service and bestowed on them the title of emeritus or emerita faculty. Read More

The results of a new study make it far less likely that KIC 8462852, popularly known as Tabby’s star, is the home of industrious aliens who are gradually enclosing it in a vast shell called a Dyson sphere, a theory that went viral over the past year. Read More

For Rani Banjarian, the summer of 2006 was the defining moment of his young life. For a month that summer, artillery and airstrikes were a daily occurrence as the unrest between his home country of Lebanon and neighboring Israel grew into the July War. Read More

For international student Rani Banjarian, differences are what make him feel a part of the university community. Read More

An astrophysicist and an aerospace engineer who are members of the team developing NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – the successor to the Hubble Space Telescope, scheduled for launch in 2018 – will give a free public lecture March 31. Read More

As the result of a joint faculty and staff project, Vanderbilt’s digital pipeline to the outside world will expand tenfold in the next few months, making it much easier for campus researchers to send and receive the increasingly large data files characteristic of cutting-edge scientific and medical research. Read More

Caleb Scharf, director of astrobiology at Columbia University, will address age-old questions such as "Are we alone?" and "Where do we come from?" in a free public lecture titled "Astrobiology: The Science of Life in the Universe" March 3. Read More

A team of Columbia University physicists who participated in the first detection of gravity waves will describe the monumental discovery in a free public lecture on campus Thursday, Feb. 18. Read More

College of Arts and Science faculty and graduate students have been honored with teaching and mentoring excellence awards. Read More

With discoveries ranging from the origins of consciousness to the end of the universe, 2015 was a year of incredibly diverse research at Vanderbilt University. Read More

A new generation of gamma-ray spectrometer being developed by researchers and students in the Fisk-Vanderbilt Master's-to-Ph.D. Bridge program is perfectly suited for detecting valuable minerals hidden within the asteroids, comets, moons and minor planets in the solar system. Read More

This December Rick Chappell, research professor of physics and past director of the Office of Science and Research Communications at Vanderbilt, will receive two awards from the American Geophysical Union recognizing his achievements in communicating science to the public and teaching and mentoring students toward careers in geophysics and space physics. Read More

The director of forensic investigations for the Italian State Police is giving a free public lecture titled "A physicist at the crime scene" on the Vanderbilt campus on Thursday afternoon, Oct. 29. Read More