Research

The Department of Physics and Astronomy conducts forefront research in a variety of areas in contemporary physics. Research expenditures exceed $6 million annually. Additionally, faculty from the department play a leadership role in several interdisciplinary centers and institutions. The faculty consists of 30 professors with Physics and Astronomy as their home department, and 28 research faculty and associates.

Interdisciplinary Centers

• Advanced Computing Center for Research & Education (ACCRE)
• Vanderbilt Institute for Integrative Biosystems Research and Education (VIIBRE)
• Vanderbilt Institute of Nanoscale Science and Engineering (VINSE)
• Vanderbilt University Institute for Imaging Science (VUIIS)

On-Campus Facilities

• 300kV Accelerator Lab
• Arthur J. Dyer Observatory
• Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectrometer
• Keck Foundation Free-Electron Laser
• VINSE Core Laboratories
• VINSE Affiliated Laboratories
• Paramagnetic Resonance Spectrometer
• Scanning and Transmission Electron Microscopes
• Ultrafast Tunable Lasers
• Physics Analysis Cluster

Off-Campus Facilities

• Brookhaven National Laboratory: PHENIX at RHIC
• CHESS (Cornell)
• Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory
• CERN: CMS at the Large Hadron Collider
• Marshall Space Flight Center
• Oak Ridge National Laboratory
• SMARTS Telescopes (Chile)
• KELT-South Telescope (South Africa)