Author: Leslie Gibson McCarthy

Representatives and leadership from Washington University and the 28 McDonnell International Scholars Academy institutions came together with policymakers, researchers, students and corporate partners for the recent Fifth International Symposium on “The Role of Research Universities in Addressing Global Challenges.” The symposium, sponsored by the McDonnell Academy, focused on how interdisciplinary research and education collaboration can lead to innovative solutions for the world’s most pressing problems

The School of Engineering’s Yasutaka Furukawa, PhD, combines 3-D computer vision of indoor scenes with the capabilities of Google Maps and Google Earth to create a unique, high-resolution, photorealistic mapping experience of indoor spaces. Though he is starting with spaces like the New York museum The Frick Collection, he intends to bring his technology to St. Louis — specifically to Washington University’s Danforth Campus.

For Mark Rollins, PhD, professor of philosophy and chair of the Performing Arts Department (PAD), both in Arts & Sciences, a guiding principle throughout his distinguished career at Washington University in St. Louis has been making connections in the search for answers. This principle has proved useful in his administrative work for the university and as an educator and researcher whose focus is on making connections between science and art.

The government of India’s Department of Biotechnology, Indian corporate leaders and Washington University in St. Louis have invested $2.5 million to launch the Indo-U.S. Advanced Bioenergy Consortium for Second Generation Biofuels (IUABC). The goal of the center is to increase biomass yield in plants and algae, enabling downstream commercial development for cost-effective, efficient and environmentally sustainable production of advanced biofuels.

Scientists from the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis have shown a new way to reverse or eliminate energy loss in optical systems such as lasers. They are doing so by, ironically, adding loss to a laser system to actually reap energy gains. In other words, they’ve invented a way to win by losing.​​​

Our 21st-century world faces seemingly insurmountable problems. It is a challenge simply to understand the breadth of the issues, let alone find sustainable and adoptable solutions. History has shown that no single entity, or even country, can do this alone. And the world’s research institutions — colleges and universities rich in diversity and scholarship — […]

Washington University in St. Louis alumnus W. E. Moerner, PhD, has been awarded the Nobel Prize in chemistry. Moerner shares the award, announced Oct. 8 by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, with Eric Betzig, PhD, of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Stefan W. Hell, PhD, of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, in Germany. The trio received the award for developing super-resolved fluorescence microscopy.​

Lihong Wang, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a prestigious BRAIN Initiative Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Wang’s three-year, $2.7 million award, is one of 58 grants totaling $46 million announced Sept. 30 by Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, director of the NIH, in Washington, D.C.

The Global Diversity Overseas Seminar Program (GDOS) is hosting a series of events this fall to highlight the program to the Washington University in St. Louis community, using the June 2014 trip to Ghana as a benchmark.

Over the course of about 24 hours Sept. 22-23, four student athletes from Washington University in St. Louis were tabbed by national coaches’ organizations as “Athlete of the Week.” It’s an unprecedented honor in school history, one in which Athletics Director Josh Whitman calls “inspirational.” To put it into perspective, the university received only six such honors throughout the entire academic sports year in 2013-14.