Year: 2021

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.

As Donald Trump prepares to leave the presidency Jan. 20 in the wake of being accused of fomenting the riot at the U.S. Capitol, he is reportedly considering an unprecedented move: the self-pardon. While no president has ever pardoned himself, the act might be more trouble than its worth for Trump, notes Dan Epps, a law professor at Washington University in St. Louis.

The U.S. and university flags over Brookings Hall are lowered to half-staff until sunset Wednesday, Jan. 13, in honor of U.S. Capitol Police officers Brian D. Sicknick and Howard Liebengood, who died last week.

Bruno Sinopoli, the Das Family Distinguished Professor and chair of the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, has been named an IEEE Fellow of the Class of 2021, one of the organization’s most prestigious honors.

In light of the Jan. 6 mob attack on the U.S. Capitol building, many Democrats, and even some Republicans, have called for the use of the 25th Amendment to remove President Trump from office. What is that amendment and how does it work? Washington University in St. Louis law professor Greg Magarian explains.