Chris Vanags
Director, Peabody Research Office
Chris Vanags is the Director of the Peabody Research Office and a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences. As a founding faculty member of the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt, he helped to develop and implement numerous STEM enrichment programs in partnership with Metro Nashville Public Schools which have been adopted or adapted several different universities in the United States and abroad. His work has drawn in over $5M in NIH funding to the district to serve tens of thousands of middle and high school students since 2007. This model was adapted for a four-year educational reform effort in Abu Dhabi, UAE where his team created two STEM-based model high schools and re-wrote of all Cycle 3 science and mathematics standards for the emirate. Vanags’ work is helping to inform the creation of the College of Education inside the American University of Iraq-Baghdad (AUIB), strengthen STEM education in Pakistan, and improve research infrastructure in Jordan. Vanags has secured over $52M in research for his work and is currently an investigator or co-investigator on research projects sponsored by NASA, the US Department of State, USAID, the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.