Two-time National Book Award winner and Tulane Professor of English Jesmyn Ward continues to earn praise for her 2018 commencement speech with the advice to “persist, work hard.” Forbes, Fast Company, Business Insider and TIME included Ward in their lists of the best commencement speeches this year. Also, Ward published an essay, “My True South: Returning Home to a Place I Love More Than I Loathe,” in the Aug. 6–13, 2018, issue of TIME magazine.

Michael Naguib, an assistant professor in the School of Science and Engineering, won prestigious awards from the NANOSMAT Society and the American Ceramic Society this year. Naguib specializes in two-dimensional materials and electrochemical energy storage. His group at Tulane focuses on developing novel energy materials.

The Tulane Brain Institute received a five-year, $1 million Comprehensive Enhancement Grant from the Louisiana Board of Regents. “Our goal is to build research facilities for Tulane neuroscientists that are among the best in the country,” said Jill Daniel, Gary P. Dohanich Professor in Brain Science and founding director of the Brain Institute. (See page 38 to read about a Priddy Family Foundation gift to the institute.)

Asim Abdel-Mageed, Zimmerman Professor of Cancer Research at Tulane School of Medicine, and his colleagues were part of a team that published research in Scientific Reports this spring that examined whether drugs already approved to treat other diseases or conditions could be effective in blocking the spread of cancer cells.

Eight alumni and two current students have received grants from the Fulbright U.S. Student Program to conduct independent research in Morocco, Peru and Zambia, or work as English teaching assistants in Brazil, Colombia, Estonia, Jordan, Malaysia and Poland in 2018–19. “The Fulbright award is a natural extension of a Tulane education with its similar values of reciprocity, international engagement and promotion of mutual understanding among nations,” said Charlotte Maheu Vail, Tulane’s Fulbright Program adviser and director of the Honors Program.

Allison Emmerson, an assistant professor of classical studies in the School of Liberal Arts, won the Rome Prize offered by the American Academy in Rome and an American Council of Learned Societies fellowship. Emmerson plans to spend the academic year 2018–19 in Rome, finishing her upcoming book, which will analyze how tombs were a central feature of suburbs within the ancient Roman world.

An exhibit, curated by architecture professor Carol McMichael Reese, honors A. Hays Town (A ’26). “Town’s popular—and perhaps abiding—legacy is as a regionalist who sought to create an indelible image of home in Louisiana,” said Reese. The exhibit is at Hilliard University Art Museum in Lafayette, Louisiana.

University Professor Walter Isaacson has joined CNN’s late-night public affairs show “Amanpour & Company” as a contributor. Isaacson also published an essay, “Shaped by Water: The Mississippi Remains the South’s Most Vital Artery,” in the Aug. 6–13, 2018, issue of TIME magazine.

• Iñaki Alday is the new dean of the School of Architecture.
• Brian Edwards is the new dean of the School of Liberal Arts.
• Thomas LaVeist is the new dean of the School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine.