A Limitless Sense of Possibility

Dear Emory alumni and friends,

Awaiting this year’s Convocation ceremony in Atlanta, I joined Emory faculty and university leaders on stage overlooking a large room filled with our newest first-year students. They are the future of Emory, and their enthusiasm and excitement were palpable.

Assistant Professor Christina Gavegnano delivered the keynote address, and our new students listened in awe, absorbed in her incredible story of personal and professional discovery. Dr. Gavegnano’s research has advanced lifesaving medical breakthroughs, including a potential HIV-1 cure and a first-line COVID-19 treatment used by patients worldwide. An Emory doctoral graduate herself, she used royalties from the COVID drug to create the Gavegnano Drug Discovery Program, a lab that engages Emory undergraduates in advanced scientific research.  

The morning after her speech, Dr. Gavegnano’s email inbox was flooded with requests from first-year Emory students asking to join her lab. Keep in mind, these were students who may not have yet set foot in a campus classroom! This is what Emory is all about — ambition, heart and a limitless sense of possibility. I see these qualities everywhere on our campuses.     

I see them in the record-breaking research funding our faculty and researchers attract –– more than $1 billion in sponsored awards for the second year in a row. That support is propelling pioneering advances across disciplines and reflects the excellence, impact, and talent of our outstanding faculty and students — graduate and undergraduate.

I see them in Emory professors like physician-scientist Dr. Max Cooper, whose historic discoveries transformed understanding of the immune system. His career and work were celebrated this fall with the inaugural Max Cooper Prize Symposium, which honored leading scientists who continue to build on his immense contributions.

I see them in Ideas Festival Emory, an innovative showcase for scientists, musicians, writers, filmmakers and creators launched at Oxford College. This inaugural event is the brainchild of Kenneth Carter, Charles Howard Candler Professor of Psychology, and founding director of the new Center for Public Scholarship and Engagement, based at Oxford College. And it drew an array of creative participants and guests, including Grammy and Academy Award-winning artists.

And I hear it in the magnificent performances of acclaimed pianist William Ransom, the Mary L. Emerson Professor of Piano at Emory, who founded the Emory Chamber Music Society of Atlanta — the largest and most active chamber group in the Southeast — and regularly brings world-class musicians and performances to campus and the community. This is Will Ransom’s 40th year at Emory, and you can read more about his remarkable career in this issue.

Ambition and heart. These elements are at the core of the Emory mission. Our fall semester is underway, and I can only imagine the creativity, brilliance and commitment we will see emerging on campus in the days ahead.

Gregory L. Fenves 
President
Emory University