Startup veteran Robert Grajewski has been chosen as the inaugural executive director of the newly created Vanderbilt University Innovation Center.

Kevin Niswender, M.D., Ph.D., a physician-scientist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center whose work has helped advance understanding of diseases ranging from obesity to schizophrenia, is one of 10 recipients of the 2016 Harrington Scholar-Innovator Awards.

To ease data collection for clinical research and ongoing analysis of clinical processes, teams at Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) are working to bridge the gap between clinical systems and research systems.

Björn Knollmann, M.D., Ph.D., has been named director of the newly formed Vanderbilt Center for Arrhythmia Research and Therapeutics (VanCART).

John Gore, director of the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science, has been named a fellow of the National Academy of Inventors. Fellowship is granted to “academic inventors who have demonstrated a prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on society.”

Enrollment has opened for Case Studies in Personalized Medicine, Vanderbilt's latest free massive open online course, or MOOC. The six-week course starts Jan. 15.

James Crowe Jr., M.D., director of the Vanderbilt Vaccine Center, and Anthony Fauci, M.D., director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), recently participated in a U.S. Senate National Institutes of Health (NIH) caucus briefing held in Washington, D.C., by Senate NIH caucus co-chairs Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Dick Durbin (D-IL).