Author: Talia Ogliore

A 2023 Astronaut Scholar, Avital Isakov studies green energy solutions in Robert Wexler’s laboratory in the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences and plans to pursue a PhD in computational and theoretical chemistry.

Jennifer Heemstra was installed as the Charles Allen Thomas Professor in Chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis during a ceremony April 10 at the Whittemore House. Her lab is focused on harnessing the capabilities of proteins and nucleic acids to address unmet needs in biomedicine and the environment.

Carbon emissions associated with air travel to professional conferences make up a sizable fraction of the emissions produced by researchers in academia. Andrea Gokus, a McDonnell Center postdoctoral fellow in Arts & Sciences, is advocating for astronomers and others to reduce those emissions.

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and University of Health Sciences and Pharmacy in St. Louis contributed to a national study that identifies how gentrified parts of a city have notably more urban wildlife than ungentrified parts of the same city.

What can be done when one threatened animal kills another? Researchers in Arts & Sciences confronted this difficult reality when they witnessed attacks on critically endangered lemurs by another vulnerable species, a carnivore called a fosa.

Washington University in St. Louis will manage data processing and dissemination for the Lunar Environment Monitoring Station, one of the first three potential payloads selected for Artemis III, NASA’s mission which will return astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years.

Geoscientist Claire Masteller in Arts & Sciences will look at the erosive power of ocean waves on rocky coastlines with a CAREER award from the National Science Foundation.

Researchers with the Forest Park Living Lab have been tracking these two hawks’ movement data since December. Through work tracking a variety of animals, the project is providing a map of health and movement that can guide conservation steps. 

Biologist B. Duygu Özpolat in Arts & Sciences published a single-cell atlas for a highly regenerative annelid worm. This research may help inform stem cell technologies and regenerative medicine down the line.

Although earthquakes may seem uncommon in the New York area, they are not unheard of — and there are similarities to earthquakes experienced in St. Louis, according to seismologist Doug Wiens in Arts & Sciences.