“At the Tulane School of Medicine, applications for admission to the class of 2025 are up more than 35% compared to the same time last year.”

The Newcomb Art Museum will commemorate the life of the late Kim Boutte, a member of the Fi Yi Yi Mardi Gras Indian tribe and a longtime Sodexo employee at Tulane, through a portrait by New Orleans–based artist Brandan “BMike” Odums. The portrait, still being created, is in response to calls from the Tulane community to honor Boutte’s contribution to the cultural landscape of New Orleans and the connections she made with students.

Researchers from the School of Architecture will assist in designing new uses for Louisiana mid-20th-century African American schools that were abandoned in the wake of school desegregation. Laura Blokker, interim director of the Preservation Studies program at Tulane, along with Andrew Liles, assistant professor of architecture, received the biennial Richard L. Blinder Award for this work.

For the 12th year, architecture students built a sukkah on the uptown campus. Constructed by Oct. 1, the temporary structure for Sukkot, a Jewish fall harvest festival, had to go up quickly because of COVID-19 restrictions. Made of pine and measuring 10.5 feet by 12 feet, it had two walls to facilitate safe passage, instead of the traditional three, and built-in seats that allowed four people to sit socially distanced.

“By shining a light on gene editing, the Nobel committee is bringing a needed awareness of the wonders of nature — and of the technology that will increasingly determine how nature works.”

Dr. Joshua Denson, assistant professor of medicine and pulmonary and critical care medicine physician, led a study that found that COVID-19 patients who have metabolic syndrome are three times more likely to die from the virus. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of at least three of five conditions: hypertension, high blood sugar, obesity, high triglycerides and abnormal cholesterol levels.

Microbiologist Lisa Morici and immunologist James McLachlan at the School of Medicine were awarded a $150,000 Fast Grant for a project to make next-generation COVID-19 vaccines more effective. The team will test whether they can produce a better immune response in tissues most vulnerable to SARS-CoV-2 infection by adding bacteria-based adjuvants to vaccines in development. Fast Grants are awarded within 48 hours of researchers applying.

Samendra Sherchan, assistant professor in the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, is lead investigator of a study that revealed the presence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater in Louisiana. Scientists collected wastewater samples in Southern Louisiana over a period of four months and monitored SARS-CoV-2 using an ultrafiltration method.

School of Medicine researchers have designed a synthetic protein against COVID-19. Dr. Jay Kolls, John W. Deming Endowed Chair in Internal Medicine and lead author of the research, said the engineered protein, called MDR504, is designed to go to the lungs to neutralize the virus before it can infect lung cells. In addition to a treatment, the protein could be used as a pre- or post-exposure therapy for healthcare workers, first responders and vulnerable populations at high risk.

Dr. Richard Oberhelman and others at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine have partnered with local healthcare providers for a COVID-19 study of patients and healthcare workers in New Orleans as part of a larger Centers for Disease Control and Prevention effort to better understand the virus. The study will provide estimates of how many people in a given area have COVID-19 and overall infection rates over time. It will also examine geographic, demographic and clinical trends.