Research Sparks

Vanderbilt Associate Professor Norbert Ross’ theater work has taken him across Latin America, including to Chile and Argentina. (Submitted photo) Norbert Ross isn’t your typical cultural anthropologist. When he’s out in the field in places like Mexico, El Salvador, Argentina and Chile, the associate professor of anthropology in the… Read More

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

Ana Christina da Silva Iddings will never forget the day that she—as a Brazilian teenager who did not speak English—flew by herself to Las Vegas. Her parents sent her there to live with relatives she had never met. Da Silva Iddings’ life-changing experiences in Vegas, where she became fluent in English and worked in daycare, set her on a path to help multilingual children who are simultaneously learning English as they learn other subjects in the classroom. Read More

Ela Knapik still remembers the first zebrafish she saw under a microscope—two days old, no bigger than an eyelash, tail wiggling, heart visibly beating. That was more than 20 years ago during her search for a postdoc position. That tiny fish has held her attention ever since and helped unravel many of the biological mysteries she has published about during her professional career. Read More

The day 14-year-old Christos Constantinidis finished reading Asimov’s New Guide to Science, he knew he was going to be a scientist. Today, he studies what’s actually happening in our brains when we’re thinking. Read More

Ege Kavalali, chair of the Department of Pharmacology at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine Basic Sciences, wants to know how the billions of cells in our brains talk to each other all day. 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

Jad Abumrad, Distinguished Research Professor of Communication of Science and Technology and creator of award-winning series like Radiolab, More Perfect, Dolly Parton’s America and Fela Kuti: Fear No Man, set out in life to be a composer. Perhaps a poet, maybe a fiction writer, but it was music, Abumrad said, that was “running through me constantly.” Read More

As a middle school math teacher on Chicago’s South Side, Chezare A. Warren, now associate professor of leadership, policy and organizations at Peabody College and principal investigator of The Possibilities Project, noticed something interesting. 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

He leads groundbreaking work creating robotic tools to make surgeries safer. Now, with a passion for partnership, see how Robert Webster is carving a path for others to take their life-changing innovations and turn them into reality. Read More

Whether Major Jackson is teaching, writing or critiquing, at the center of his work is a voracious hunger for artful language—underpinned by a commitment to painting the quotidian in new and unexpected ways. 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