Author: Diana Lutz

SchaalPresident Obama has appointed Barbara A. Schaal, Ph.D., the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and vice president of the National Academy of Sciences, to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

On April 16 and 17, two Washington University teams took part in the 14th annual Missouri Collegiate Mathematics Competition, sponsored by the Missouri Section of the Mathematical Association of America, at Truman State University. One team, seniors Alexander Cloninger, Jeremy Diepenbrock and Jonathan Swenson, took first place in a field of 30 teams from 15 […]

Each year, the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences awards a prize in memory of Marion Smith Spector, a 1938 WUSTL graduate who studied zoology under the late Viktor Hamburger, Ph.D., professor of biology and a prominent developmental biologist who made many important contributions while a faculty member at the University. This year, the […]

In the world of small things, shape, order and orientation are surprisingly important, according to findings from a new study by chemists at Washington University in St. Louis. Lev Gelb, WUSTL associate professor of chemistry, his graduate student Brian Barnes, and postdoctoral researcher Daniel Siderius, used computer simulations to study a very simple model of molecules on surfaces, which looks a lot like the computer game “Tetris.” They have found that the shapes in this model (and in the game) do a number of surprising things.

Washington University and the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center have received two awards totaling $35 million from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) to do research on novel energy initiatives. At $20 million, the Washington University research award is the largest ever received on the Danforth Campus. The $15 million for the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center is the largest the organization has ever received.

Photo by Joe AngelesCommunity is a major theme in the life and work of Jonathan M. Chase, Ph.D., associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and director of the Tyson Research Center. As an ecologist, his niche is community ecology, and he is particularly interested in the processes that lead to variation in the numbers and types of species that live in a given site, and how that varies through space and time.

David Kilper/WUSTL PhotoComputer engineers at Washington University in St. Louis are bringing the minimalist approach to medical care and computing by coupling USB-based ultrasound probe technology with a smartphone, enabling a compact, mobile computational platform and a medical imaging device that fits in the palm of a hand. William D. Richard, Ph.D., associate professor of computer science and engineering, and David Zar, research associate in computer science and engineering, have made commercial USB ultrasound probes compatible with Microsoft Windows mobile-based smartphones, thanks to a $100,000 grant Microsoft awarded the two in 2008.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have figured out the orientation of a protein in the antenna complex to its neighboring membrane in a photosynthetic bacterium, a key find in the process of energy transfer in photosynthesis. Robert Blankenship, Ph.D., Markey Distinguished Professor of Biology and Chemistry in Arts & Sciences, led a team that for the first time combined chemical labeling with mass spectroscopy to verify the orientation. The team also included Michael Gross, Ph.D., WUSTL Professor of Chemistry, Immunology and Medicine, and Chemistry graduate students Jianzhong Wen and Hao Zhang. A paper describing this work appeared recently in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA.

A three-person contingent from WUSTL is among the teams of the world’s brightest computer programming talent that will gather in Stockholm, Sweden, April 18-22 to compete in the 33rd annual Association for Computer Machinery International Collegiate Programming Contest.

Somalee Banerjee is the winner of the 2009 Stalker Award.