Author: Talia Ogliore

Ethan Lowder, a December 2021 graduate who majored in the biochemistry track of biology in Arts & Sciences, won the Ralph S. Quatrano Prize; Kayla Wallace, a senior majoring in environmental biology with a minor in anthropology in Arts & Sciences, received the Spector Prize.

Research from the Living Earth Collaborative highlights the cascading consequences of common parasitic infections. Although many of these infections are not lethal, they can still impact health or animal behavior, leading hosts to eat less vegetation. The study led by biologist Amanda Koltz in Arts & Sciences is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Gabriella Smith, a senior biology major in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is a champion for access to mental health services. She hopes to combine her passion for working with children with her leadership skills to pursue a career in medicine that incorporates patient care, research and advocacy.

Kater Murch, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, helped an Argonne Laboratory team with their effort to create a new form of qubit, reported in a recent Nature paper. This system shows great promise to be developed into ideal building blocks for future quantum computers.

A team that includes Lee Sobotka and Robert Charity, both in Arts & Sciences, concluded that the role that neutrons play in the creation of carbon, considered the definitive building block of life, is much smaller than previously thought.

William B. McKinnon and Paul Byrne, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University, played important roles in developing a report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. It identifies scientific priorities and funding recommendations to maximize the advancement of planetary science in the next decade.

Joseph Jez was installed as the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences during a ceremony April 4 in Holmes Lounge. He gave an installation lecture, “Exploring Nature’s Machinery.”

Washington University in St. Louis and the Living Earth Collaborative are part of a new Missouri-based conservation initiative led by the Saint Louis Zoo. Working with the Endangered Wolf Center, scientists are looking to answer ecological and health-related questions about canids — red foxes, gray foxes and coyotes — as well as bobcats, which live in close association with canids.

Crows and ravens have great flying ability, which allows them to gain access to new places more easily. While their flying skills were key to their success, new research from biologists in Arts & Sciences also shows that big bodies and big brains played an important role in helping crows and ravens survive in the new climates they occupied.

Demand for new kinds of antibiotics is surging, as drug-resistant and emerging infections are becoming an increasingly serious global health threat. Biologist Joshua Blodgett in Arts & Sciences discovered a new candidate for drug development from bioactive compounds in a soil bacterium. The findings are reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.