Author
Advanced Neuroimaging at Vanderbilt
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Vanderbilt is a leader in the application of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to the neurosciences and the 7 Tesla human MRI instrument was one of the first installed in the United States. At Vanderbilt, this has been used by engineers, scientists and physicians in the neuroscience community to...
A Trans-institutional Big Data Architecture at Vanderbilt
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) Effectively managing and analyzing the flood of data being generated in all areas of education and research is one of the major challenges for universities in the 21st century.The Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education (ACCRE) seeks to develop a data-centric infrastructure and culture at Vanderbilt. ACCRE...
Program for Bioeffector Discovery
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) More than half of the drugs introduced in the last thirty years are either natural products or compounds based on natural products. Unfortunately, the discovery of biologically active natural products has slowed dramatically in recent years because of the limitation of novel microorganisms and the cumbersome process of...
Trans-Institutional Collaborative to Improve Chronic Disease in Children and Their Families in Underserved Settings
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Asthma and sickle cell disease are common in African-American children with both contributing to significant childhood health disparity. The main problem in improving care for one of the most vulnerable pediatric populations is closing the gap between well-established evidence and practical strategies that can change lives of children...
Private Governance Approaches to Climate Change
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Climate change is an ideologically polarizing issue both domestically and internationally. Drawing on research in law, social psychology, economics and behavioral science, our interdisciplinary research team has developed a novel approach that bypasses the climate gridlock by focusing on non-government solutions. Private environmental governance occurs when private organizations...
Ethics of Health and Human Flourishing
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) Since its inception, biomedical ethics has used a model of ethics in which autonomous individuals make high stakes medical decisions. Often described as “principlism,” this model of human moral agency is also the customary focus of bioethics as a discipline and the general paradigm under which bioethics is...
A Multi-disciplinary Approach to Assessing Healthcare in Brazil
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Health is closely linked with social, political and economic conditions.Yet, scholars and health care professionals often focus on quantity of interventions rather than the holistic quality of impact. International organizations (e.g. USAID) have recognized the critical impact of multidimensional determinants on health and disease. Still lacking, however, is...
Learning Institute for Health Solutions in the U.S. South
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) The health issues in the U.S. South often reflect, amplify, and shape the political and economic tensions in the U.S. writ large. Southern states like Tennessee are home to major American health-insurance corporations, yet many hospitals face financial challenges linked to falling reimbursements, and many low-income areas effectively...
The Laboratories for Innovation in Global Health Technologies (LIGHT)
Aug. 8, 2015— Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA)Diagnostic methods for global health are critical. Existing methods fail to meet the need, either because they are not accessible to health care workers in the developing world or because they are not affordable. A major challenge is to translate research into affordable technologies at the periphery of...
Vanderbilt Center for Molecular Probes
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) Positron Emission Tomography (PET) is a powerful technology for imaging specific receptors in patients. Current technology requires direct access to large, expensive cyclotrons for the generation of the requisite radioisotopes. A team from Engineering, Arts and Science and Medicine is developing microfluidic-based single-use reactors to enable on-demand production...
The Science of Music Research: Creating a Program for Music, Mind, and Society
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Scientists, clinicians, musicians and leaders in the music industry are increasingly interested in understanding how music affects behaviors and perceptions. Emerging research shows that music perception, appreciation and practice can influence cognition, language, memory, emotional state and social cohesion. In addition, there is rapidly expanding interest in using...
NetsBlox: Digital Learning Technology for Computer Science Education
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Skills in computer programming are increasingly becoming an essential tool for solving global problems. Traditional approaches to computer programming are being enhanced by the development of visual programming languages, which are more easily taught to interested students. Although effective, such languages have not been developed for distributed programming...
Vanderbilt Institute for Obesity and Metabolism
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) Over the past three decades, obesity has risen dramatically, just recently plateauing with two thirds of adults in the United States being overweight or obese. The United States spends approximately $147 billion annually on health issues directly related to obesity, accounting for over 10% of the national healthcare...
The Vanderbilt Pre3 Initiative
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Annually, more than 100 million pregnancies experience a major complication. In the United States, Tennessee is one of the states most affected by this problem. Pregnancy complications not only contribute to poor health during infancy, but are recognized as risk factors for chronic illnesses in adults. The Vanderbilt...
Sterling Ranch–Sustainability and Education Research Center
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) This project is in the process of establishing a multifaceted sustainability test bed using the development of the Sterling Ranch planned city. Sterling Ranch represents a unique, dynamic opportunity for research and immersion learning for both undergraduate and graduate students. Initially, the Sterling Ranch Sustainability Test Bed will...
ViSE – Bringing Engineers and Surgeons Together
Aug. 8, 2015— Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) The Vanderbilt Initiative in Surgery and Engineering (ViSE) is an interdisciplinary, transinstitutional program designed to facilitate interaction between clinicians, engineers and scientists. ViSE has grown from a grass roots effort to a major force on the Vanderbilt campus. This reinvestment award will provide seed grants for new...
Wisdom Working Group
Aug. 8, 2015—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) The Wisdom Working Group (WWG) is rooted in the idea that older adults are lifelong innovators and experiential researchers whose insights can prove invaluable to Vanderbilt’s goal of solving “problems of importance to society” through discovery and learning.The goal here is to showcase these insights through educational technology...
Campus Questions Related to the January 27th Executive Order
Feb. 10, 2017—February 10, 2017 Dear members of the Vanderbilt community, I’m writing to share information in response to questions we have received related to the Jan. 27 Executive Order. I want you to know that no Vanderbilt students, faculty or staff affected by the January 27 Executive Order were outside of the United States and unable...
Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center Event, Monday July 11
Jul. 8, 2017—A message from Provost Susan Wente and Dean of Students Mark Bandas – July 8 Dear Vanderbilt Students, As a reminder about information we shared Thursday in an email to you, the Vanderbilt community is invited to come together Monday, July 11, at the Bishop Joseph Johnson Black Cultural Center to reflect on the recent...
Adaptive eBooks for Building Children’s Language Skills
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Led by an interdisciplinary team of Vanderbilt faculty with expertise in language, cognitive science, and artificial intelligence, this project will develop an adaptive eBook that represents a groundbreaking approach to foster early language. The ability to comprehend complex text is fundamental to skilled employment, but many students (especially those...
Biomedical Microscopy – Immersion, Innovation, Discovery (BioMIID) at VBC
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) This project seeks to create a collaborative environment across three schools for biophotonics innovation and biomedical discovery within the Vanderbilt Biophotonics Center. Students, postdocs and faculty from engineering, physical sciences and biomedical sciences will work together to innovate – by building microscopy systems that do not yet exist in...
Vanderbilt Brain Institute
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) One of Vanderbilt’s flagship trans-institutional centers, the Vanderbilt Brain Institute (VBI) is home to the Neuroscience Training Program, the largest of Vanderbilt’s biomedical programs, with training faculty spread across 22 departments and five schools within the university and Medical Center. This funding will enable VBI to run pilot programs,...
Initiative for Autism, Innovation and the Workforce
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) This project will study the unique capabilities of autistic adults, as well as how to match these capabilities to 21st-century workforce needs and how to develop managers who can leverage the “autism advantage” to fuel innovation in their organizations. This initiative connects Vanderbilt’s world-leading researchers in autism-related disorders, psychometrics...
A Reinvestment in Cryo-Electron Microscopy at Vanderbilt
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) This project will reinvest in the Center for Structural Biology (CSB) by acquiring a new microscope that will enable the laboratory to remain on the cutting-edge of research. The Titan Krios will replace an aging microscope that is insufficient to support the high-resolution cryo-EM needs of Vanderbilt faculty. The...
Data Science Visions
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (VRA) Data science is closely related to “big data”, which focuses on particularly large and complex datasets, but data science is more focused on the process of learning from, and making decisions based on, the data rather than the size of the dataset itself. Data science can be applied to...
Addressing the Epidemic of HPV-Associated Cancers
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) This project will develop supportive infrastructure and educational programs that engage an interdisciplinary team of investigators comprised of faculty and students from across campus to lay the groundwork for a consortium focused on HPV-associated cancers. Faculty and students will conduct pilot projects designed to assess the local burden of...
Vanderbilt LGBT Policy Lab
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) The Vanderbilt LGBT Policy Lab will connect interdisciplinary faculty and students to broaden Vanderbilt’s international reputation on scholarship surrounding the correlates, causes, and consequences of LGBT-related public policies. Vanderbilt is currently one of a handful of top universities worldwide with multiple faculty members whose research directly addresses the intersections...
Materials Durability and Environmental Research Facilities Hub
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) Vanderbilt’s researchers have provided national and international leadership in environmental sustainability and development/assessment of infrastructure materials. The Materials Durability and Environmental Research Facilities Hub will provide core facilities in support of research on the performance and durability of natural and engineered materials and systems exposed to a wide range...
The Vanderbilt Microbiome Initiative
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) The Vanderbilt Microbiome Initiative (VMI) will provide Vanderbilt the opportunity to become the first university that unifies a major precision medicine initiative with personalized microbiome studies. The VMI will blend Vanderbilt’s clinical, basic, translational and educational endeavors into a community of 100+ microbiome scholars who will catalyze development of...
Understanding the Complexity of Life One Cell at a Time
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) In living organisms, several single cells interact in non-intuitive ways to support complex functions such as cognition, cardiovascular integrity and immunity. Rare single cells often maintain tissue health or, conversely, drive disease. A current challenge is to understand how large ensembles of single cells accomplish these complex functions. Next...
Vandy Reach: Putting Obesity Science to Work
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) The initiative aims to develop a tool within the EPIC health platform to capture obesity data, catalyze trans-disciplinary conversations with area experts and improve behavioral interventions for dissemination. Two-thirds of adults in the United States are overweight or obese and almost one in three children are overweight or obese...
VUSAT Initiative
Aug. 8, 2017—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) The VUSAT initiative brings together the advanced resources of Engineering, Anthropology, Earth & Environmental Sciences and Astronomy to design and develop a Space-based platform to study the evolving ecology on earth. The overarching goal is to develop valuable knowledge in climate change-based and man-made ecological effects by interweaving relevant...
Vanderbilt Initiative for the Study of Antimicrobial Resistance
Aug. 8, 2018—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) This project aims to challenge the existing paradigm and expand the understanding of the environmental drivers of antimicrobial resistance through research and teaching activities. This program will place Vanderbilt at the forefront of efforts to disseminate awareness, educate and identify effective strategies to reduce the global threat of antimicrobial...
Digital Cultural Heritage Research Cluster
Aug. 8, 2018—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Inspired by UNESCO’s mission to protect cultural heritage in danger of destruction, this program will harness expertise across multiple disciplines and schools at Vanderbilt to develop new digital methods for identifying, studying and preserving historic cultural expressions. This project connects humanistic research with emergent digital technologies for the creation...
Vanderbilt Initiative for Interdisciplinary Geospatial Research
Aug. 8, 2018—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Many of the biggest challenges facing humanity, and the biggest research questions facing faculty from across disciplines, have significant spatial dimensions that require sophisticated geospatial thinking, technology, modeling and analysis. Effective geospatial research and education requires intentionally transdisciplinary programs aimed at producing creative and innovative geospatial thinking. This program...
The Initiative for Personalized Microbial Discovery and Innovation
Aug. 8, 2018—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (ViA) From drug-resistant pathogens to therapeutic probiotics, microorganisms (‘microbes’) dramatically impact all human life, and a deeper understanding of human-microbe relationships will generate new therapies to improve health and treat infections. However, just as every human individual is profoundly unique, so too is there tremendous diversity among the microbes that...
A Synchrotron-like X-ray Source for Structural Biology at Vanderbilt
Aug. 8, 2018—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) Despite the development of new structural techniques such as Cryo-EM, X-ray crystallography remains the dominant method used in all structural biology. However, the rate of X-ray discovery is limited by long queues and maintenance downtime of synchrotron radiation sources, which are enormous federally run facilities. A new type of...
VCL Intersectional Study of Black Women and Girls in Society
Aug. 8, 2018—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) This transdisciplinary hub of research, discovery and teaching activities will center on elevating and understanding structural barriers and forms of resilience that black women and girls experience across various social contexts in society, and how intersectional interventions might be created to expand opportunities and increase pathways to success. The...
Africa at a Crossroads: Challenges and Prospects
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) This project seeks to build – for the first time at Vanderbilt – an interdisciplinary community of Africanists to explore the topic “Africa at a Crossroads.” Investigators will explore the widespread notion that contemporary socio-economic, cultural and political indicators demonstrate that Africa now stands at a pivotal point –...
Optimizing Health and Well-Being in Adults With Autism Spectrum Disorders
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) The steep rise in the prevalence of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has focused growing attention on this group of individuals at local, state and federal levels, as well as in policy, legislative and funding initiatives. Despite this concern there remains a dearth of services, studies and treatments for adults...
Advancing the Development of Brain-Based Measures of Treatment Outcomes in Clinical Trials across the Lifespan
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) This project aims to advance the development of functional, cost-effective and easy-to-administer brain-based measures of treatment outcomes for use in human clinical trials across the lifespan. Success in translating basic science discoveries to effective treatments or interventions in diverse patient groups depends, in part, on the ability to accurately...
Towards a Trans-disciplinary Program on Data Science Policy
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Society is increasingly entranced by and concerned about big data and data science. Big data is often described as massive growth in the “four V’s” of data: variety, velocity, veracity and volume. Yet critical policy issues must be addressed in order to understand the implications of the collection and...
Understanding Digital Dominance in Teaching and Learning: An Interdisciplinary Approach
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Digital tools are constantly changing the way we teach and learn, yet our understanding of these tools is lagging behind. Some students and teachers continue to employ traditional learning tools such as printed text and pen whereas others enlist digital tools such as MOOCs, online discussion spaces, interactive digital...
Engineering Immunity
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) From cancer to diabetes to chronic infections, our immune system plays an important role in nearly every disease. Accordingly, harnessing the power and exquisite specificity of the immune system has enormous – and still largely untapped – potential to improve human health and wellbeing. The mission of ‘Engineering Immunity’...
Vanderbilt Initiative for Intelligent Resilient Infrastructure Systems (IRIS)
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) A perfect storm is brewing involving civil infrastructure protection. On one hand, infrastructure protection systems are exposed to more natural disturbances with ever increasing severity, as a consequence of climate change. On the other, the nation’s civil infrastructure is aging and in poor health, with increasingly restricted budgets allocated...
Establishment of a World-Class Metabolomics Service
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Despite the critically important information that metabolomics analysis provides and despite the world renowned strengths in mass spectrometry that Vanderbilt possesses, the university does not provide a dedicated metabolomics service. This TIP is establishing a state-of-the-art metabolomics service in the Mass Spectrometry Core of the Mass Spectrometry Research Center (MSRC)....
The Vanderbilt Center for mHealth Technologies
Aug. 8, 2019—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) This TIP is the first formal program to convene faculty from across Vanderbilt University (VU) and Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) to address critical gaps in infrastructure, knowledge and technologies related to the rapidly growing domain of mobile technology systems for improving health and guiding healthy behaviors (collectively...
Vanderbilt Program for Next Generation Vaccines-Integrating Structural Biology with Big Data
Aug. 8, 2019—Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) The Vanderbilt Program for Next Generation Vaccines brings together scientists from the School of Medicine, the College of Arts & Science and the School of Engineering to create a complex pipeline that integrates structural biology with big data for the discovery of novel antibodies that will spur the...
Vocations in Racial Justice: Trans-Disciplinary Activist/Practitioner/Scholar (TAPS)
Aug. 8, 2019—Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) Historically, vocations in racial justice have drawn upon lifelong commitments of energized practitioners across several generations, whether in the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the National Urban League (NUL) or in innumerable other international, national or local organizations. Drawing from the intellectual resources from the many...
VINSE I: Increasing Immersion and Innovation in Interdisciplinary Nanoscience Research and Education
Aug. 8, 2019—Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) The objective of this TIP is to launch new initiatives related to immersion experiences for Vanderbilt students and innovation in trans-institutional research activities and education, including entrepreneurial endeavors that would benefit from accessibility to a “nano-maker” space. The TIPs funding is enabling VINSE to be among the elite schools in...
The Vanderbilt International Public Opinion Project
Aug. 8, 2019— Program Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) This TIP supports the expansion of the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) at Vanderbilt and globally. The strategy, aimed at increasing Vanderbilt faculty and student connections to the center and to extending its international reach, will be encapsulated in a rebranding of the institute as the Vanderbilt...
Vanderbilt Initiative for Smart-City Operations Research (VISOR)
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) The rapidly emerging smart city concept aims to enhance the quality and performance of urban services, reduce costs and resource consumption, and provide an infrastructure to engage citizens more effectively. Creating partnerships where the city, adjoining universities and industry collaborate to serve local causes and adapt technologies to community...
Human Immunology Discovery Initiative
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Reinvestment Award (VRA) By applying cutting-edge Vanderbilt technologies to the immune and genetic analysis of patients with immune diseases, this VRA will generate educational opportunities, discover new biology of immune regulation, and advance personalized immune medicine. The funds will be utilized to coordinate leading-edge trans-disciplinary research and accelerate Vanderbilt’s ability to generate...
The GlobalVU Initiative
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) The GlobalVU Initiative will support and foster international research by Vanderbilt faculty and graduate students, bring more foreign scholars to campus and increase our prominence abroad. The initiative will strengthen and nourish existing units engaged in international activity and lower barriers to international work for all units. The core...
International Initiative for the Study of Slave Societies
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview The International Initiative for the Study of Slave Societies responds to the University’s Academic Strategic Plan. It builds upon the internationally recognized Slave Societies Digital Archive (https://slavesocieties.org) and related cross-school projects that are focused on the history and modern legacies of slavery. Participants are organizing national and international research collaborations and conferences, participating in...
Novel NMR-based profiling platform for research and clinical applications
Aug. 8, 2019—Overview Type: Vanderbilt Initiative Award (ViA) There is rapidly expanding knowledge associated with the health effects related to changes to the metabolome. Examples of this powerful diagnostic tool have been used for early detection of newborn diseases, diabetes and cancer to name just a few. This initiative will develop a novel Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (NMR)...