Many Vanderbilt undergraduates in chemistry are completing their applications for graduate school, charting their next major step toward a career in research. Our current graduate students, their predecessors, weathered pandemic life with tremendous resilience, many graduating in five years to permanent positions. We understand that undergraduates applyling to graduate school this year have faced similar obstacles in their preparation, so we have again suspended the GRE requirement. New faculty member Allison Walker has launched her innovative research program at the intersection of data science and chemical biology. Mature initiatives in chemical biology and nanoscale science and engineering have sustained a track record of experimental innovation, publication of high-impact chemical science, and robust funding.
Students who want the reputation of a leading chemistry program, but a department size that supports personalized, mentored training can find a nurturing environment at Vanderbilt. Vanderbilt Chemistry is a mid-sized department (25 primary and secondary research faculty) with the resources of a large research-intensive university. Our undergraduate program (7000 students) is ranked 15th in the nation, alongside a 16th-ranked School of Medicine. Our urban campus houses chemistry, engineering, and biomedical sciences within a hundred-yard radius, leading to a fluid environment for interdisciplinary research. We host an extensive lineup of resources that enable our discoveries: mass spectrometry, NMR (small molecule and protein), peptide, antibody, and oligonucleotide synthesis, high throughput screening, electron microscopy, ultrafast lasers, X-ray diffractometry, and a professional-grade clean room.
The success of our program is due to the tireless contributions of graduate students and trainees who are committed to problem-solving while preparing their minds and hands for a career in the sciences.
- Our chemistry graduate students have garnered 12 NSF Graduate Research Predoctoral Fellowships in the past 6 years.
- Numerous students earn independent NIH predoctoral fellowships each year, and a half-dozen others are appointed to interface training grants.
- Recent graduates have gone directly to positions at AbbVie, Pfizer, Eli Lilly, and Boehringer-Ingelheim, or postdoctoral studies at Yale, Scripps-La Jolla, and Stanford.
You may have crossed paths with our graduates in academic and industrial positions. They are the present and past of Vanderbilt Chemistry. We seek your help in identifying the future of Vanderbilt Chemistry.
Sincerely,
Sandra J. Rosenthal
Jack & Pamela Egan Professor of Chemistry