The Tulane Innovation Institute, in collaboration with Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost Robin Forman, has launched the Provost’s Proof of Concept Fund to provide competitive grants of up to $50,000 to help university faculty, graduate students or staff get promising ideas and technologies ready for the market.

The U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs named Tulane a Fulbright Top Producing Institution for U.S. Students, a recognition given to the U.S. colleges and universities that received the highest number of applicants selected in the program last year. The Fulbright U.S. Student Program is the government’s flagship international educational exchange program.

Katherine Mills, associate professor of epidemiology at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, said in U.S. News and World Report, “If we meet people where they are, we may be able to have an impact on cardiovascular health in this population.” Mills co-authored a preliminary study that indicates religious beliefs of Black churchgoers in New Orleans may influence health behaviors.

“The bottom line is, I don’t see how the government can actually get away with banning all of TikTok from everyone.”

In a CNN Wonder article about the NASA Magellan spacecraft’s capture of imagery of Venus in the 1990s, Jennifer Whitten, assistant professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, said, “Now that we’re very sure the planet experienced a volcanic eruption only 30 years ago, this is a small preview for the incredible discoveries VERITAS will make.” Whitten is associate deputy principal investigator of VERITAS (Venus Emissivity, Radio Science, InSAR, Topography, And Spectroscopy), a new mission that will head for Venus within a decade.

A research partnership between Tulane and Rice universities has developed gelatin-like patches of fake skin — called hydrogels — to assist in the study of how mosquitoes transmit deadly diseases and which repellents are most effective. The hydrogels eliminate the need for human and animal testing.

School of Medicine researchers Elizabeth Norton and Dr. Jay Kolls have developed a nasal spray vaccine to thwart antibiotic-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae, a leading cause of bacterial pneumonia. They were awarded a National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases contract worth up to $16 million to bring a nasal spray pneumonia vaccine to Phase 1 clinical trial.

Hundreds of middle and high school students participated in the Greater New Orleans Science and Engineering Fair, held on the uptown campus in the spring. Promising students in Orleans, Jefferson, St. Bernard and Plaquemines parishes were nominated to participate by their schools. Judges included faculty and students from the School of Science and Engineering.

A study led by Yixue Shao, health policy and management researcher at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, examined data from nearly 45,000 female Medicaid beneficiaries in Louisiana and found that breast cancer screening rates decreased to nearly zero in April 2020, during the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rates fully recovered by mid-2021.