Science & Technology

Meredith Jackrel, in Arts & Sciences, studies protein misfolding and how it leads to disease. She is collaborating with Jai Rudra at the McKelvey School of Engineering to develop amyloid-inspired vaccine technologies specifically tailored for seniors. The approach could be relevant to COVID-19 as the elderly are particularly susceptible to its severe complications.

The American Institute of Architects St. Louis recognized Washington University in St. Louis’ Bryan Hall with a 2020 Merit Award in Architecture. Bryan Hall had at one time housed office and lab space for the McKelvey School of Engineering. It was transformed into additional research space for the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences.

Research from the lab of Kimberly Parker in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis has discovered the mechanism that keeps formulations of the herbicide dicamba from going airborne. And they consider why it sometimes fails.

Rohit Pappu, a professor in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is part of a multi-institutional team awarded a $7.5 million MURI grant to study and engineer membraneless organelles.

Michael Wysession, professor in earth and planetary sciences, and Bryn Lutes, a lecturer in chemistry, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, believe that high school students will learn chemistry better when they crunch actual climate data, rather than memorize the periodic table by rote. They helped write a national chemistry curriculum that is loaded with real-world examples — like ocean acidification — and is already being rolled out by school districts in Los Angeles and other parts of California.

With a grant from the USDA, a researcher at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis works toward a customizable kill switch — a genetic circuit that could tell bacteria to self-destruct.

Researchers from physics and chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis leveraged data from nuclear scattering experiments to make stringent constraints on how neutrons and protons arrange themselves in the nucleus. Their predictions are tightly connected to how large neutron stars grow and what elements are likely synthesized in neutron star mergers.

Jonathan Barnes, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, was selected as one of 15 Young Investigators by the American Chemical Society’s Division of Polymeric Materials: Science and Engineering. The selection recognizes Barnes’ excellence in polymer research and marks him as an emerging leader in the field.

Red bricks — some of the world’s cheapest and most familiar building materials — can be converted into energy storage units that can be charged to hold electricity, like a battery, according to new research from chemists in Arts & Sciences.

New collaborative research from the Department of Chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, leveraged quantum chemistry approaches to develop additional data infrastructure for an isotope of silicon, 29Si.