Science & Technology

Dani Wilder, a December 2020 graduate of the biochemistry track of biology in Arts & Sciences, will receive the Ralph S. Quatrano Prize. It is awarded to the thesis showing the greatest evidence of creativity in design, research methodology or broader scientific implications.

Ella Ludwig, a senior majoring in biology in Arts & Sciences, will receive this year’s Spector Prize in recognition of academic excellence and outstanding undergraduate achievement in research.

New research from biologists in Arts & Sciences shows how animals and bacteria differ in the enzyme they use to attach heme to the cytochrome. The results help illuminate a promising target for new antibiotics.

Periodical cicadas are above ground for only a handful of days every 17 years. Human-induced rapid environmental change is altering the world they will briefly encounter, according to Brett Seymoure, a postdoctoral fellow with the Living Earth Collaborative at Washington University in St. Louis.

The Department of Defense has awarded Mark Meacham and Arpita Bose a three-year $600,000 grant. The researchers will work to understand extracellular electron uptake in bacteria.

David Fike, professor of earth and planetary sciences and director of environmental studies, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, won a $98,406 EAGER Grant from the National Science Foundation for a project in geobiology and low-temperature geochemistry.

Some plants like ginkgo trees have either male or female flowers, not both. Susanne Renner, honorary professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, reviewed the genetic basis of sex determination in plants for Nature Plants and will guest-edit a special issue of a Royal Society journal on the topic.

Three researchers at Washington University School of Medicine have been elected to the American Academy of Microbiology in recognition of their scientific achievements and original contributions that have advanced the field of microbiology.

Sometimes overshadowed by neighboring Amazon forests, the forests of the Andes Mountains are helping to protect the planet by acting as a carbon sink, absorbing carbon dioxide and keeping some of this climate-altering gas out of circulation, according to biologists in Arts & Sciences and their partners from a Living Earth Collaborative working group.

Ecologist James Stroud in Arts & Sciences studies how patterns of contemporary natural selection can shape the structure of entire communities. He won the American Society of Naturalists’ 2021 Young Investigator Award, one of the most prestigious for young researchers in the field of ecology and evolution.