Keivan Stassun, the Stevenson Professor of Physics and Astronomy and senior associate dean for graduate education and research at Vanderbilt University’s College of Arts and Science, has been chosen as the winner of the 2018 AAAS Mentor Award.

Determining if a fire is accidental or due to arson is a process often plagued by poorly understood science, subjective judgments on the part of investigators and inadequately trained personnel, according to a new AAAS report on the quality of fire investigation in the United States.

Aaron Kennedy, an assistant atmospheric sciences professor, recently encountered an atmosphere unlike anything he normally finds in his field work on the prevalence of extreme weather patterns around the world: the halls of Congress.