Partnerships & Collaborations: Government, Industry & Nonprofits

What Partnerships Create

Partnerships and collaborations across universities, government and the private sector is the key to pioneering projects that impact society. Here are a few examples:

Ancora Innovation

Ancora Innovation is a collaboration focused on the union of Vanderbilt’s innovative life science discovery efforts and Deerfield’s commitment to accelerating state-of-the-art drug development. The partnership has generated four drug discovery and development programs to date, the most recent focusing on developing therapeutics for a rare form of epilepsy.

I-24 MOTION

Apartnership between Vanderbilt, the Tennessee Department of Transportation, and Gresham Smith created I-24 MOTION, the only real-world automotive testing environment in the world. Stretching for four miles just southeast of downtown Nashville, the smart highway is equipped with 300 4K digital sensors capable of logging 260,000,000 vehicle-miles of data per year.

Pathfinder

Army Futures Command awarded Vanderbilt University its inaugural Pathfinder Project, an investment from the Army Research Laboratory and the Civil-Military Innovation Institute Inc. to support collaborations between researchers and creative soldiers to rapidly innovate high-impact, research-based technologies with a path to commercialization and prompt acquisition of products by the Army. One example of this collaboration is the Soldier Assistive Bionic Exosuit for Resupply, a three-pound suit that reduces stress on soldiers’ backs by more than 100 pounds while lifting.

Tennessee Education Research Alliance

The Tennessee Education Research Alliance (TERA) is one of the only research-practice partnerships in the country focused on state-level education policy. TERA connects Vanderbilt University's Peabody College and the Tennessee Department of Education to carry out high-quality, practical research that informs state-level policy, impacts the practice in schools and districts across Tennessee, and contributes to national conversations on K-12 education.