Year: 2020

What type of face mask is most effective? Will classrooms and other campus environments be safe for faculty and students this fall? What is the latest guidance for staying healthy? Get answers to these questions and more at a special “Ask the Doctors” town hall for the Danforth Campus community. 

Derek Hoeferlin, chair of landscape architecture and urban design at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has been named a University Design Research Fellow for Exhibit Columbus 2020-21.

Robert L. Williams II, professor emeritus of psychological and brain sciences and founding director of Washington University’s Black Studies program (now the Department of African & African-American Studies) in Arts & Sciences, died Aug. 12, 2020. He was 90.

Bradley Jolliff, the Scott Rudolph Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences and director of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, has been awarded the 2020 Eugene Shoemaker Distinguished Scientist Medal by NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute, recognizing significant contributions to planetary science throughout his career.

John Lynch, MD, professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named president of Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Meanwhile, Katherine Henderson, MD, assistant professor of clinical medicine at the School of Medicine, has been named the hospital’s chief medical officer.

It is not easy to conduct human milk research during a pandemic. Yet despite the consistent lack of quality evidence for transmission of viral RNA from breast milk, some leaders are pushing ahead by altering public health and clinical practice guidance, according to E.A. Quinn, associate professor of biological anthropology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Natalie Sorenson, a first-year student at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, died May 5, 2020. She died as a result of emotional challenges during lockdown for COVID-19. Natalie Sorenson was 18.

Raman Malhotra, MD, associate professor of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been elected president of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, a professional society dedicated to sleep medicine. He will serve as president-elect this year and take over as president in 2021.

Using properties of light from fluorescent probes is at the heart of a new imaging technique developed at Washington University’s McKelvey School of Engineering that allows for an unprecedented look inside cell membranes.

Rob Morgan, in Arts & Sciences, shares the story of how he steered the Beyond Boundaries Program — in its first cohort in 2019-2020 — to roll with the challenges of COVID-19. Embracing resiliency and creativity, Morgan and the program pivoted, creating a podcast to bridge the digital divide.