The National Institutes of Health named Mark VanLandingham, professor at the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, the 12th Matilda White Riley Honors Distinguished Lecturer. VanLandingham was honored for his pioneering research on how culture and shared history helped the Vietnamese American community in New Orleans recover from Hurricane Katrina more quickly than other communities.

The important role that Tulane researchers have played in fighting infectious disease epidemics around the world was highlighted in “OutBreak: Epidemics in a Connected World,” an exhibit at the Diboll Gallery in the Tidewater Building from May–July. Co-sponsored by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the exhibit was part of a national effort to raise awareness of the human, animal and environmental factors contributing to infectious disease epidemics.

Geetha Parthasarathy, a research scientist at the Tulane National Primate Research Center, has been awarded a $100,000 grant to investigate the use of supplemental therapeutics for the treatment of tick-borne Lyme neuroborreliosis, a nervous system disorder affecting the central and peripheral nervous systems. Lyme disease is the fastest-growing infectious disease in the nation, newly infecting 300,000 individuals yearly.

Dr. Giovanni Piedimonte has been named Tulane’s new vice president for research, effective Sept. 3. He also will join the pediatrics faculty in the medical school. Piedimonte was previously the Steven and Nancy Calabrese Endowed Chair for Excellence in Pediatric Care, Research and Education at the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine of Case Western Reserve University.

The National Institutes of Health awarded Tulane School of Medicine a contract for up to $8.5 million over five years to develop a more effective and longer-lasting vaccine against pertussis, more commonly known as “whooping cough.” Microbiologist Lisa Morici, PhD, and immunologist James McLachlan, PhD, will lead the project to use outer membrane vesicles, which are nanoparticles shed by bacteria as they grow, to stimulate a more potent immune response than current vaccines against the disease. Worldwide, there are an estimated 24.1 million cases of pertussis and about 160,700 deaths per yea

Can cleaning vacant lots cause a chain of events that curbs child abuse or stops a teen from falling victim to violence? That’s the provocative question behind a new research project to study whether maintaining vacant lots and fixing up blighted properties in high-crime areas reduces incidents of youth and family violence. The National Institutes of Health awarded Tulane a $2.3 million grant to test the theory in New Orleans.