Science & Technology

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced Feb. 17 that Washington University in St. Louis’ Gary Patti has been awarded a 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship. He is among 126 outstanding U.S. and Canadian researchers selected as fellowship recipients this year. Awarded annually since 1955, the fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars, the next generation of scientific leaders.

Sean B. Carroll, PhD (left), vice president for science education at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a WUSTL alum (AB ’79) and one of the country’s foremost experts on evolutionary developmental biology, returned to campus to help the Institute for School Partnership celebrate its annual Darwin Day event for area high school teachers. Instrumental in Carroll’s appearance was mentor and teacher David Kirk, PhD (right), professor emeritus of biology in Arts & Sciences, who called Carroll one of the most “distinguished graduates in biology the department has had.”

A WUSTL team learned last month that they had won the Gold Medal for their analysis of a problem during the international University Physics Competition, held in November. Using the principles of physics, they predicted characteristics of an animal on an extraterrestrial planet.

WUSTL geologist Philip Skemer has built a custom-made rock-formation appartus that traps a rock sample between tungsten carbide anvils about a quarter inch in diameter within a 100-ton hydraulic press and then twists the sample slowly from below. His target pressure is six giga-pascals, the pressure 250 kilometers down, to the base of the tectonic plates. He will use the apparatus to determine through experiment the mechanisms that lead mantle rocks to flow, dragging the tectonic plates with them.

St. Louis is becoming widely recognized as a successful hub for startup businesses, with a wide range of groups and services that provide a support network for budding entrepreneurs. WUSTL students are getting a firsthand look at one of those resources this semester as they help formulate pricing strategies, marketing plans and competitive analysis for businesses working at T-REX in downtown St. Louis.

Philip Skemer, PhD, assistant professor in the department of earth and planetary science in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER award) from the National Science Foundation. He will use the award for a series of experiments in which rock samples will be deformed at the extreme temperatures and pressures they encounter along the boundaries where plates collide.

Seven current and former Washington University in St. Louis students, collectively known as “The Force,” took home the top prize of $50,000 during the GlobalHack event held Jan. 31-Feb. 2 at Union Station in St. Louis.

Biologist Joan E. Strassmann, PhD, was installed Jan. 23 as the Charles Rebstock Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences in a ceremony in Holmes Lounge. Following the formal installation, Strassmann gave an entertaining talk about a high-stakes gamble she and Queller made 15 years ago: to switch from studying cooperation and conflict in social insects, famous for their complex societal arrangements, to studying it in an amoeba, whose claim to fame had been its simple lifestyle.

Along the Missouri River between St. Louis and Hermann, a restored German settlement, is an enchanted valley blessed by low-density land use where people grow North American grapes for Missouri wine, groundcover in interlocking trays for green roofs, vegetables for St. Louis locivore restaurants and native trees for environmentally conscious landscapers. WUSTL readers will recognize many of the contributers to Missouri River Country, a book that celebrates this land and the people who have lived there. All proceeds from the book’s sales will go to land conservation.

WUSTL’s Institute for School Partnership is committed to evolution education as part of a sound K-12 science curriculum, and it kicks off its second annual Darwin Day celebration Friday and Saturday, Feb. 7 and 8, with workshops for teachers and students. Darwin Day is celebrated internationally on or around Feb. 12, Darwin’s birthday, as a celebration of science and humanity. Highlighting the weekend on the WUSTL campus: a visit from alum Sean B. Carroll, PhD, vice president for science education at Howard Hughes Medical Institute.