Author: Kelly Wiese Niemeyer

A department in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis has been renamed. It is now known as the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies. The previous name was the Department of Jewish, Islamic, and Near Eastern Languages and Cultures.

Regis J. O’Keefe, MD, PhD, the Fred C. Reynolds Professor and head of Orthopaedic Surgery at the School of Medicine, received the Alfred R. Shands Jr., MD, Award.

An image of the maze-like structures of the mouse olfactory system recently was named a winner of the 2018 BioArt competition. Graduate student Lu M. Yang created the image.

Nominations are being accepted for the Gloria W. White Distinguished Service Award. The award recognizes a staff member for exceptional effort and contributions to the university. Nominations are due by March 15.

The Danforth Staff Council will hold its spring town hall meeting from 2-4 p.m. Tuesday, March 12, at Edison Theatre in the Mallinckrodt Center. Hear from Chancellor-elect Andrew D. Martin, staff ombuds Jessica Kuchta-Miller and others.  

Patrick White, MD, assistant professor of medicine, has been named director of the newly formed Division of Palliative Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The appointment was announced by Victoria J. Fraser, MD, the Adolphus Busch Professor and head of the Department of Medicine.

Greg Bowman, at the Washington University School of Medicine, is leading one of the largest crowd-sourced computational biology projects in the world. Called Folding@home, it’s aimed at understanding how proteins fold into their proper shapes. Bowman understands the importance of protein folding more than most. He became legally blind by age 9 due to a condition caused when a protein doesn’t fold properly.

The next class of the university’s Professional Leadership Academy & Network (PLAN) has been selected. PLAN is a yearlong professional development program, overseen by the Office of the Provost, intended to cultivate future leaders at Washington University.

Stanley E. Thawley, MD, professor emeritus of otolaryngology-head and neck surgery at the School of Medicine, died Jan. 22 while at work in St. Louis. His care for patients, including veterans, extended to the rural communities of Madison and Ste. Genevieve counties.

Michael W. Penney, MD, associate professor of radiology, has been named vice chair for community radiology for Mallinckrodt Institute of Radiology (MIR) at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.