Author: Leslie Gibson McCarthy

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.

Sherrilyn Ifill, JD (left), president and director-general of the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, shares a laugh with Kim Norwood, JD (center), professor of law at the School of Law, and Karen Tokarz, JD, the Charles Nagel Professor of Public Interest Law and Public Service and director of the Dispute Resolution Program, before Ifill’s Assembly Series talk Sept. 17 in Anheuser-Busch Hall’s Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom.

Faculty, staff and students are invited to celebrate the grand opening of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at Washington University in St. Louis from 4-5:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 23, in Olin Library, Room 202. Attendees will be able to tour the space and meet with center staff and advisory board members.

Michael S. Kinch, PhD, joins Washington University in St. Louis as associate vice chancellor and director of the university’s new Center for Research Innovation in Business. H. Holden Thorp, PhD, provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs, made the announcement.