The 2025 Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar, Kimberly Bress, left, poses with her mentor, Vanderbilt Prize winner Huda Akil, PhD. (photo by Susan Urmy)
Nominations for the 2026 Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar are invited through August 5.
Candidates for the Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar are graduate students in biomedical sciences at Vanderbilt (PhD or MD/PhD track) who have completed the qualifying exam and have at least one year left to complete the PhD degree.
Competitive nominees demonstrate excellent leadership qualities through their research and service to the scientific community, as well as characteristics that exhibit outstanding potential to impact medicine through research during their careers.
Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholars receive a $1,000 cash prize. They also are eligible to receive up to $1,000 reimbursement for travel expenses related to advancing their professional development.
This year’s Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar will be mentored for a year by the 2026 recipient of the Vanderbilt Prize in Biomedical Science, Eva Nogales, PhD, an internationally known structural biologist whose research has yielded groundbreaking insights into the function of macromolecules important for gene expression, cell division and disease.
Nogales is the Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and Senior Faculty Scientist in the Division of Molecular Biophysics and Integrative Bioimaging at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.
The Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar will be recognized during Nogales’ Discovery Lecture on May 6, 2027.
Nominations for the Vanderbilt Prize Student Scholar will be accepted from department chairs, program directors in the biomedical sciences, directors of graduate studies, and faculty mentors.
Nomination materials should include the nominee’s CV, a nomination letter from the faculty mentor, adviser or nominator, a copy of the nominee’s thesis proposal, and a committee report from the nominee’s qualifying examination.
Nomination materials should be submitted to vumcresearchenterprise@vumc.org by August 5 as a single PDF. For more information, visit the VUMC Office of Research website at www.vumc.org/oor/vanderbilt-prize-student-scholar.
