Science & Technology

Biologist Jonathan Myers in Arts & Sciences leads work at Tyson Research Center that fueled an investigation into the role of underground fungi as drivers of global forest diversity.

Kenneth Olsen, a professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, was installed as a George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in a Sept. 27 ceremony held in Holmes Lounge. His installation address was titled “Plants, evolution and living in clover.”

Washington University scientists have documented 10 different bat species in our area, including several threatened and endangered bats.

Red colobus monkeys are the most threatened group of African monkeys. With a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a Washington University team will model viral transmission dynamics among red colobus monkeys and their human neighbors near Kibale National Park, Uganda.

Biologist Himadri Pakrasi in Arts & Sciences, who studies how cyanobacteria contribute to the chemistry of life, will lead a $5 million effort to develop technology to convert atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer. Yinjie Tang and Yixin Chen at the McKelvey School of Engineering are co-investigators on the project.

Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering have long sought to understand the power of locusts’ sensing, computing and locomotory capabilities.

Petra Levin, a professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, was installed as a George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in a Sept. 19 ceremony held in Holmes Lounge. Her installation address was titled “The Environment Matters.”

New research from Washington University in St. Louis and the Georgia Institute of Technology directly measures the long-term survival of lizards in the wild, providing a more complete explanation of how evolution plays out among species that live side-by-side.

Kara Andres, a Living Earth Collaborative postdoctoral researcher, used eDNA to follow invisible trails of genetic information from fish. While her original study probed the Great Lakes, her recent work is focused on microbial communities in local waterways.

Researchers led by Fuzhong Zhang at the McKelvey School of Engineering developed a synthetic biology tool to comprehensively reveal gene regulatory networks in E. coli.