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FEDERALLY FUNDED RESEARCH
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School of Nursing receives more than $3 million from Health Resources and Services Administration to improve access to care in rural and underserved areas
Two Vanderbilt School of Nursing professors have received grants totaling more than $3 million from the Health Resources and Services Administration to educate nurse practitioners to provide critical health care in rural and underserved areas. Ginny Moore, director of the women’s health nurse practitioner specialty and associate professor of nursing, will receive $1.5 million over three years to continue and enhance the Vanderbilt Nursing Education Program–Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners . . . designed to add more sexual assault nurse examiners in needed geographies, including rural and underserved locations across the U.S. Marci Zsamboky, assistant professor of nursing, will receive $1.92 million over three years to support the behavioral health workforce education and training program within the school’s psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner (lifespan) specialty, which she directs. Specifically, the grant will be used to improve the number of graduated Advanced Practice Registered Nurses prepared to deliver safe, high-quality, culturally competent behavioral health care in rural and underserved areas. MORE
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Team wins competitive DOE award to advance isotope production critical for U.S. science, medicine and industry
A U.S. Department of Energy [Office of Science] $4 million initiative to advance research in isotope production includes a Vanderbilt engineering professor’s work on separation technologies and to scale up processes. The funding is part of a key federal program that produces critical isotopes otherwise unavailable or in short supply for U.S. science, medicine and industry. Isotopes, or variations of the same elements with the same number of protons but different numbers of neutrons, have unique properties that can make them useful in medical diagnostic and treatment applications. They also are important for applications in quantum information science, nuclear power, national security and more. MORE
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$1.5M DOE grant targets engineering of cyanobacteria as biofuel production platform
A new, $1.5 million Department of Energy [Office of Science] grant brings together experts from three institutions to parse the metabolism of a blue-green algae that holds great promise for biofuel production. The team, led by Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Jamey Young, will take a systems biology approach to identify how cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, can be engineered to produce large amounts of lipids in the form of free fatty acids. Significantly, free fatty acids secreted by cyanobacteria are more easily recovered than lipids typically produced by green algae. The goal of this new project is to understand how lipid metabolism is regulated in cyanobacteria so host cells can be engineered for high-yield production of medium-chain free fatty acids, which are readily converted into fuels. The grant is part of a $45.5 million DOE program to support research geared towards understanding and harnessing nature’s biological processes to produce clean biofuels and bioproducts. MORE
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Vanderbilt-led tutoring program promotes patterning skills in preschool students
Researchers from Peabody College have developed a new tutoring protocol to help preschoolers better recognize patterns, which is a key skill in mathematics. The research team . . . implemented a five-session tutoring initiative that showed promise for improving repeated patterning knowledge. The researchers found that students in the patterning+numeracy tutoring program performed significantly better on a measure of patterning knowledge after the tutoring was completed than the other two groups, although the patterning+numeracy group did not have higher post-tutoring performance than the other groups in measures of numeracy or mathematics knowledge. The project was supported by Institute of Education Sciences. MORE
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CS student’s Microsoft dissertation grant supports her vision disability research
Computer science graduate student Haley A. Adams has been awarded a 2021 Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant. She is one of 10 recipients in the United States and Canada who are underrepresented in the field of computing and pursuing research aligned to research areas carried out by Microsoft researchers. Adams combines her expertise in computer graphics, perceptual psychology, and human-computer interaction to understand how virtual and augmented reality affect the way people interact with their surroundings. Her dissertation work notably focuses on improving the accessibility of immersive technology for people with vision impairments, a population that accounts for over 14 million people in the United States alone. Adams is a researcher in the School of Engineering’s Learning in Virtual Environments (LiVE) Laboratory, which is led by her adviser Bobby Bodenheimer, professor of computer science and electrical engineering. MORE
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Research Snapshot: Astrophysicist outlines ambitious plans for the first gravitational wave observatory on the moon
Vanderbilt astrophysicist Karan Jani has led a series of studies that make the first case for a gravitational wave infrastructure on the surface of the moon. The experiment, dubbed Gravitational-Wave Lunar Observatory for Cosmology, uses the moon’s environment and geocentric orbit to analyze mergers of black holes, neuron stars and dark matter candidates within almost 70 percent of the entire observable volume of the universe, he said. This work comes as NASA revives its Artemis program, which aims to send the first woman and the next man to the moon as early as 2024. Ongoing commercial work by aerospace companies, including SpaceX and BlueOrigin, also has added to the momentum behind planning for ambitious scientific infrastructure on the surface of the moon. MORE
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Pre-election polls in 2020 had the largest errors in 40 years
Public opinion polls ahead of the 2020 election were the most inaccurate in a generation, according to Josh Clinton, Abby and Jon Winkelried Chair and professor of political science, who recently served as chair of a special task force convened by the American Association for Public Opinion Research specifically to evaluate polling. The task force found that polling during the two weeks before the election overstated support for then-Democratic nominee Joe Biden by 3.9 percentage points, which was the largest polling error since 1980 when support for Democratic nominee Jimmy Carter was overestimated by 6 percentage points. The presidential election between Biden, the eventual winner, and incumbent president Donald Trump was much closer than polling had indicated. As chair of the task force, Clinton offered his Vanderbilt students an opportunity to participate in meaningful and exclusive analysis of polls. In his spring and fall 2020 courses on elections, Clinton’s students helped analyze poll results for the task force report as they learned about previous elections. MORE
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Vanderbilt honors James Lawson with new institute
Vanderbilt Divinity School and the College of Arts and Science will honor one of the university’s most revered alumni with the launch of the James Lawson Institute for the Research and Study of Nonviolent Movements at Vanderbilt University. The institute, drawing on rich local history, will nurture evidence-based research and education rooted in nonviolent strategies, create and deepen partnerships in Nashville, and develop leaders equipped to contribute to a thriving society. Launching this fall, the institute will host public workshops, seminars and learning opportunities to train the next generation of community organizers equipped with the skills to make meaningful, sustainable change. The institute will further honor civil rights history in Nashville and nurture community partnerships that align with the institute’s mission and values. The role of religion in this work—from Lawson’s influences to the training of today’s pastoral and lay leaders—will serve as a common thread in the pursuit of the institute’s mission. MORE
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Vanderbilt announces demolition of final Carmichael Towers buildings to continue residential colleges progress
After delaying demolition due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Vanderbilt University is moving forward on its plan to demolish Carmichael Towers East residence hall with a controlled implosion on Saturday, July 31. The implosion of the 14-story Towers 1 and 2 is scheduled for 9 a.m. The removal of Carmichael Towers 1 and 2, to make way for a new residential college in the West End Neighborhood, aligns with Vanderbilt’s Academic Strategic Plan, a key pillar of which is to strengthen the undergraduate residential experience, and with FutureVU, the university’s initiative to enhance the places on campus where community members live, work and learn. Residential College C, which is scheduled to open for fall 2024, will be the fourth residential college along West End Avenue. MORE
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VUbrief summarizes Vanderbilt news items to inform our Congressional community of developments at the university. Visit our website for past issues of VUbrief. Vanderbilt University Office of Federal Relations (202) 216-4361
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