Caldwell named vice provost for faculty affairs and diversity

Kia Lilly Caldwell, professor of African, African American and diaspora studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been named vice provost for faculty affairs and diversity at Washington University.

How the brain seeks information about bad events

Researchers at the School of Medicine have identified the brain regions involved in choosing whether to find out if a bad event is about to happen. The findings are published in Neuron.

Edwards honored with Gloria White Award

Jill Edwards, who works in the Office of the Provost, is this year’s winner of the Gloria W. White Distinguished Service Award. Staff Day for the Danforth Campus is canceled this year, but see staff milestones and other activities online.

Improving dialysis through design

Faculty from the McKelvey School of Engineering and the School of Medicine teamed up to design better grafts for dialysis patients. Their method decreases the risk of clotting, ultimately relieving people of the pain, inconvenience and disruption of this critical treatment.

Shrinking to survive: bacteria adapt to lifestyle in flux

Biologists discovered that E. coli bacteria have a strategy that may help them to survive in between meals. The new research from the laboratory of Petra Levin in Arts & Sciences is published in PNAS.

University Libraries acquires papers of author Johnson

University Libraries has acquired the collection of Charles Johnson, the acclaimed author, cartoonist and essayist who won the 1990 National Book Award for his novel “Middle Passage.”

Research Wire

Ramakrishna Kommagani, at the School of Medicine, received a five-year $1.9 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for his research titled “Role of the Gut Microbiota in Endometriosis.”

Notables

The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts has received a two-year $100,000 grant from the Brabson Library and Education Foundation to support Fox Fridays, the school’s series of free interdisciplinary workshops.

Notables

A new report from the National Academy of Inventors and the Intellectual Property Owners Association lists Washington University among the top 100 worldwide granted U.S. patents in 2020.

Mark Franklin, former professor of engineering, 81

Mark A. Franklin, former professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the McKelvey School of Engineering, who taught for four decades, died May 25 from complications of Alzheimer’s disease in Berkeley, Calif. He was 81.