Author: Ken Duenke

The William H. and Elizabeth Gray Danforth University Center opened last August 11 to the joy of students, staff and visitors alike. On Friday, April 17, 2009, the University community will come together to celebrate its formal dedication and honor its namesakes.

ConstantinoJohn Constantino has been named the Blanche F. Ittleson Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics and director of the William Greenleaf Eliot Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the School of Medicine. The appointment was announced by Charles Zorumski, the Samuel B. Guze Professor of Psychiatry, professor of neurobiology and head of the Department of Psychiatry.

A test developed by physician-scientists at the School of Medicine may help assess more quickly the ability of Alzheimer’s drugs to affect one of the possible underlying causes of Alzheimer’s disease in humans, accelerating the development of new treatments.

Acting on a strong commitment to social justice forged while students here in the late 1960s, Washington University graduates are giving back to their campus community through the “Birds of Passage” fellowship, which will strengthen University ties with the St. Louis region while providing field experience for socially conscious graduate students.

For years, microbiologist Stephen Beverley has tried to get the disease-causing parasite Leishmania in the mood for love. In this week’s Science, he and colleagues at the National Institutes of Health report that they may have finally found the answer: Cram enough Leishmania into the gut of an insect known as the sand fly, and the parasite will have sex.

The predominance of heartburn among asthma sufferers led many specialists to suspect that acid reflux could be a trigger for the coughing, wheezing and breathlessness of asthma. In fact, it has become standard practice to prescribe heartburn medication to people with poorly controlled asthma, even if they don’t have overt acid reflux symptoms. But a new study shows that heartburn medication does not help control asthma symptoms.

Rachel T. A. Croson, Ph.D., launches a new lecture series on women in academia offered by The Center for Research in Economics and Strategy at the Olin Business School.

Theresa Wilson, founder and executive director of the Blessing Basket Project, will give the Women’s Society Adele Starbird address at 11 a.m. Wednesday, April 15, in Graham Chapel.

Acting on a strong commitment to social justice forged while students here in the late 1960s, three WUSTL graduates are giving back to their campus community through the “Birds of Passage” fellowship providing field experience for socially conscious graduate students.

Alex A. Kane has been named the Dr. Joseph B. Kimbrough Chair for Pediatric Dentistry in the Washington University Department of Surgery, Division of Plastic Surgery for Use in the Cleft Palate/Craniofacial Deformities Institute for teaching and healing. Kane is associate professor of plastic and reconstructive surgery at the School of Medicine and director of the Cleft Palate and Craniofacial Institute at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.