Science & Technology

A lunar probe launched by the Chinese space agency recently brought back the first fresh samples of rock and debris from the moon in more than 40 years. Now an international team of scientists, including Bradley Jolliff in Arts & Sciences, has determined the age of these moon rocks at close to 1.97 billion years old.

Richard Loomis, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, received a three-year $700,000 grant, with a collaborator at Marquette University, from the National Science Foundation to study highly energized molecules’ reaction pathways.

A team in the lab of Vijay Ramani at the McKelvey School of Engineering has developed a catalyst that can be used to both generate fuel and provide power.

McKelvey School of Engineering graduate student Garrett Roell has been accepted into the Office of Science Graduate Student Research program, a prestigious research opportunity funded by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

Neuroscientists in Arts & Sciences discovered that the daily release of hormones depends on the coordinated activity of clocks in two parts of the brain, a finding that could have implications for human diseases.

Sarah Anderson, a postdoctoral research associate in biology in Arts & Sciences, won the Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a three-year fellowship valued at about $200,000.

Two McKelvey School of Engineering faculty members will develop machine learning in the service of discovering new materials.

Researchers led by physicist Henric Krawczynski in Arts & Sciences completed initial construction on XL-Calibur, a new balloon-borne telescope designed to measure the polarization of high-energy X-rays from black holes, neutron stars and other exotic celestial objects.

Henry “Roddy” Roediger and James Wertsch, both in Arts & Sciences, will use a grant from the James S. McDonnell Foundation to encourage the interdisciplinary study of collective memory.

Washington University continues its “In St. Louis, for St. Louis” mission by donating 370 study cubbies to nonprofit organizations in the region. Over 1,000 cubbies were ordered at the pandemic’s outset to keep students safe, but only a portion ultimately were needed.