Science & Technology

Lindsey Steinberg has been selected to receive the 2013 Sowden Prize, given each year by the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences. The prize, named in honor of the late John C. Sowden, a professor of chemistry  and a successful carbohydrate chemist, is the highest honor the Chemistry Department bestows on a graduating senior chemistry major.

Discovering ways to honor the dignity of individuals coping with Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias is the goal of an interdisciplinary symposium on “Finding Humanity in Advanced Dementia” to be held in Wilson Hall on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St Louis on Saturday, April 27.

Lisa Alvarez-Cohen, PhD, a professor of environmental engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, will give the Ninth Annual Ryckman Lecture at 1:30 p.m. Friday, April 19. Alvarez-Cohen, the Fred and Claire Sauer Professor and past chair of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley, will speak on “From Individuals to Community: […]

The Society of Experimental Psychologists (SEP) has awarded its 2013 Norman Anderson Lifetime Achievement Award to Larry L. Jacoby, PhD, an internationally recognized scholar of human memory and a professor of psychology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

The next generation science standards have been released and Washington University in St. Louis is playing significant roles. Michael Wysession, PhD, an associate professor in the Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences in Arts & Sciences, was among the 41-member writing team who helped write the standards. And WUSTL’s Institute for School Partnership (ISP) is poised to help schools implement them in the St. Louis region.

Marilyn Krukowski, PhD, professor emerita of biology, died Sunday, April 7, 2013, in St. Louis from complications of multiple sclerosis. She was 80. Krukowski taught vertebrate structure (anatomy) in the Department of Biology for more than 30 years. Her students raved about the quality of her teaching and often cited the course as the best they ever had taken at Washington University.

​Two prominent environmental thinkers and activists will address climate change, biodiversity and pollution during a lecture at 7 p.m. April 10 in Whitaker Hall Auditorium at Washington University in St. Louis. The lecture titled “To Hell in a Handbasket?: The Global Environment and Sustainability” is free and open to the public. The primary sponsors are University College — the adult, evening and continuing education division in Arts & Sciences — and the International Affairs program in University College.

Andrew Katims has been selected to be the recipient of the 2013 Harrison D. Stalker Award given each year by the Department of Biology.  The award is given to the graduating senior in biology whose undergraduate career was marked by outstanding scientific scholarship as well as contributions to the university in areas of artistic expression and/or community service.

A strange stone found in the Moroccan desert was the talk of the recent Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. The stone has highly unusual chemistry, suspiciously like that found by the Messenger space probe, which is currently surveying the surface of Mercury. If it was from Mercury, it would be the first meteorite from that body ever found. The prospects was thrilling but doubts crept in. WUSTL’s Randy Korotev, a lunar meteroite expert, explains the arguments for and against Mercurian origin.

Thomas J. Bernatowicz,  professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, will deliver the McDonnell Distinguished Lecture at 7 p.m. Wednesday, April 10, in Room 105, Steinberg Hall, at Washington University in St. Louis. He will discuss what cosmic dust carried to Earth by meteorites has revealed about the creation of the elements by stars and supernovae. The St. Louis community is cordially invited to the lecture, which is sponsored by the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences.