Month: January 2021

A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis suggests that measuring mitochondrial DNA in the blood of patients with COVID-19 can help predict which patients are at highest risk of severe disease, requiring more intensive care.

Question: When a flu pandemic broke out in 1918, it spread around the world over the course of two years. The university offered its buildings to the Red Cross to help keep St. Louis safe during the pandemic. What was Graham Chapel used for?

New School of Medicine research indicates that allergens in the environment often are to blame for episodes of acute itch in eczema patients. Researchers found the itch signals are being carried to the brain along a previously unrecognized pathway that current drugs don’t target.

The Center for the Humanities in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis recently announced its 2021-22 cohort of faculty fellows. Faculty fellows spend a semester in residence at the center, giving them space and time to make great progress on their research and book projects.

At the Washington University Board of Trustees meeting Dec. 4, several faculty members were appointed or promoted with tenure or granted tenure, effective that day unless otherwise indicated.

Gaining control of the flow of electrical current through atomically thin materials is important to potential future applications in photovoltaics or computing. Physicists in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered one way to locally add electrical charge to a graphene device.

Physicists in Arts & Sciences, including Brian Rauch, are part of a team funded by NASA to develop the concept for the most sensitive survey of cosmic ultra-high energy neutrinos ever conducted. 

Five faculty members at the School of Medicine have been elected fellows of the Infectious Diseases Society of America (IDSA). They are Ernie-Paul Barrette, MD, Jeffrey Henderson, MD, PhD, David Hunstad, MD, Stephen Liang, MD, and Hilary Reno, MD, PhD. 

For this year’s virtual Martin Luther King Jr. Commemoration, Lerone Martin, associate professor of religion and politics, will interview Peniel E. Joseph, of the University of Texas at Austin and author of “The Sword and the Shield.” The book challenges persistent misconceptions about King and Malcolm X’s relationship and quests for justice. 

All members of the Washington University in St. Louis community are invited to nominate honorary degree candidates for the May 2022 Commencement. The Honorary Degree Task Force of the Board of Trustees is accepting nominations until Feb. 1.