Science & Technology

When the Meramec River flooded, students in the “Geospatial Field Methods” course in Arts & Sciences had an opportunity to study a significant regional event in real time. Bring on the “big drone.”

Joshua Yuan at Washington University in St. Louis and Susie Dai at the University of Missouri, along with colleagues at WashU and Texas A&M, created biodiesel with electrocatalysis and bioconversion.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and BJC Health System have launched the joint Center for Health AI. The center will focus on making care more personalized and effective for patients and more efficient and manageable for physicians, nurses and all those striving to ensure patients receive the best care.

Can we ever see too much data? Yes, actually. In some situations, visual overload can paralyze decision-making. But over the last year, the interdisciplinary SAIL lab, with help from WashU Rowing, has explored nonvisual means for transmitting real-time performance feedback.

Joshua S. Yuan, chair of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University, was installed as the Lucy & Stanley Lopata Professor Oct. 17.

Xudong Chen, a researcher at the McKelvey School of Engineering, has received a federal grant to develop a framework that would predict how fundamental system properties of large-scale networks behave in uncertain environments.

WashU biologists, led by Xuehua Zhong in Arts & Sciences, investigated the inner workings of DNA methylation in plants. Their findings could help engineer crops that are more resilient to environmental changes, like heat or drought stress.

Tao Ju, a researcher at the McKelvey School of Engineering, will develop algorithms for 3D surface modeling with a grant from the National Science Foundation.

Paul Byrne, an associate professor of earth, environmental and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at WashU, was featured in “Volcano Worlds,” a PBS Nova documentary about the powerful volcanic eruptions that have shaped worlds across our solar system.

A Washington University researcher has received a $1.5 million grant from the Department of Energy to convert carbon dioxide into carbon nanotubes that could be used in lithium-ion batteries.