Month: November 2020

A new electrolysis system that makes use of briny water could provide astronauts on Mars with life-supporting oxygen and fuel for the ride home, according to engineers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, who developed the system.

Olin Business School researchers were part of a team that learned firms take more risks after a member of their board of directors undergoes a bankruptcy at another firm where they serve as a director. The co-authors discovered such risk-taking usually occurs when this particular director both experienced a quick, less-costly bankruptcy elsewhere and serves in a position of greater influence.

Jerome F. Brasch, emeritus trustee of Washington University in St. Louis, died Tuesday, Nov. 17, 2020. He was 95.

Protest and contagion. George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. Anti-maskers and contact tracing. In “Remember… That Time Before the Last Time,” students from the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences join forces with Ron Himes and The Black Rep to reflect on the year that has been and to explore their own experiences of social protest, law enforcement, COVID-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.

“All the Flowers Kneeling,” the debut collection by Paul Tran, a senior poetry fellow in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, will be published by Penguin Books as part of the Penguin Poets Series.

David H. Gutmann, MD, PhD, the Donald O. Schnuck Family Professor at Washington University School of Medicine, is a recipient of the 2020 Neuro-oncology Scientific Award from the American Academy of Neurology. The award recognizes singular scientific achievement that has advanced the field of neuro-oncology.

A new study from the northern Rockies explores the role of fire in the finely tuned dance between plants and their pollinators. The research from biologists including Jonathan Myers in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis is published Nov. 25 in the Journal of Ecology.

Roger Jay Phillips, professor emeritus of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences and former director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, died Nov. 19 in Longmont, Colo., after suffering from complications of Parkinson’s disease. He was 80.

Young-Shin Jun, an engineer at Washington University in St. Louis, has developed a new use for a high-energy X-ray technique that has allowed her the first glimpse at the formation of iron hydroxides on a quartz surface. The implications are sweeping.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a five-year $3.2 million grant to study the genetic basis of the musculoskeletal disorder scoliosis, and particularly how it affects African Americans and other underrepresented minorities.