Science & Technology

Environmental engineers at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis have been studying dicamba drift to understand why the herbicide vaporizes and migrates to other crops.

Srikanth Singamaneni and Barani Raman, both professors at the McKelvey School of Engineering, led a team that harnessed the power of specially made nanostructures to enhance the neural response in a locust’s brain to specific odors and to improve their identification of those odors.

Patricia Weisensee, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the McKelvey School of Engineering, has received a Young Investigator Program award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

A team of researchers in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis has established the Synthetic Biology Manufacturing of Advanced Materials Research Center to work across disciplines to find nature-inspired alternatives to plastics.

Young-Shin Jun, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, has been awarded a $1.4 million U.S. Department of Energy grant to turn concentrated waste from water purification systems into valuable products for industrial use.

Robert Charity and Lee Sobotka in Arts & Sciences described Nitrogen-9 in Physical Review Letters. The Department of Energy Office of Science recently awarded the scientists $1.5 million to continue their studies of nuclear reactions and structure for the next three years.

Ashlynn Berry is one of 60 graduate students from across the country — and the only one in Missouri — selected to participate in the Department of Energy’s Office of Science Graduate Student Research (SCGSR) fellowship program.

“Digital Learning and Teaching in Chemistry,” co-edited by Gabriela Mirowitz in Arts & Sciences, features WashU chemistry instructors and explores high-tech approaches to learning beyond the lab.

Multi-omics leverages the power of several different “omics” data types at once to build a detailed picture of factors that contribute to human health and disease. Under a $19.2 million grant award, Gary Patti, in Arts & Sciences, and Ting Wang, at the School of Medicine, will manage a new hub for multi-omics analyses at Washington University.

Chenfeng Ke, an incoming associate professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, developed a unique design for tough but stretchable hydrogels, reported Aug. 23 in the journal Chem. The new material is both flexible and durable.