Vanderbilt University welcomed 104 new doctoral students Sept. 1 during the eighth annual Simple Beginnings ceremony in a Light Hall lecture room filled with family members and other well-wishers.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) has established a new career development program for scientists in implementation research. The goal is to speed the uptake and translation of scientific discoveries into routine clinical practice.

Internationally known epigeneticist C. David Allis, Ph.D., will deliver the first Flexner Discovery Lecture of the academic year at 4 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 7, in room 208 Light Hall.

Vanderbilt University research-ers have relieved symptoms of Rett syndrome in a mouse model with a small molecule that works like the dimmer switch in an electrical circuit.

Consuelo Wilkins, M.D., MSCI, executive director of the Meharry-Vanderbilt Alliance, has been appointed to a national committee charged with determining how best to return to research participants the results of studies of their blood and other bio-specimens.

Thanks to advances in treatment, the relative five-year survival rate from all combined subtypes of breast cancer now exceeds 90 percent and yet the disease remains the third leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States after lung and colorectal cancers.