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Coach Larry Kindbom’s Playbook of Champions inspires student-athletes for life.

The following are among the new faculty members at the University. Others will be introduced periodically in this space. Anca Parvulescu, Ph.D., joins the Department of English and the Interdisciplinary Project in the Humanities in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. Parvulescu earned a doctorate from the University of Minnesota. Her teaching and research interests include 20th-century American literature, literary and cultural theory, feminist theory and women’s literature, Eastern European cinema and the history of the university. She is writing a book titled Laughter’s Burst: Seriousness, Manners, Feminism. The book traces the emergence of the modern subject as a serious subject formed by and through a prohibition on laughter. It argues that the spirit of the subject’s seriousness permeates modernity’s projects, lending them a certain gravity and immutability. As a result, the deployment of laughter becomes a crucial strategy for philosophers, writers and artists who hope to challenge modernity and its projects. Laughter offers the promise of a new kind of subject and another kind of community. Yan Mei Wang, Ph.D., joins the Department of Physics in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor. She earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2002 and spent the next four years as a postdoctoral researcher in biological physics at Princeton University. In her research, she applies quantitative experimental methods pioneered in physics to address fundamental biological questions at the molecular level. At Princeton, she performed the first single-molecule imaging of LacI repressor protein and observed that LacI diffuses along DNA, thereby resolving a decades-old puzzle in DNA targeting by this protein. She will continue to explore gene regulation mechanisms by real-time tracing of single-gene regulator proteins in vitro and in vivo. Derek Pardue, Ph.D., joins the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences as assistant professor, with a joint appointment in International and Area Studies. Pardue earned a doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004, and a bachelor’s in German literature and music from the University of Massachusetts in 1991. He also holds a master’s of music in ethnomusicology from the University of Texas. For the past two years, he has been a visiting assistant professor at Union College. His research focuses on the representation of hip-hoppers as social and cultural agents. For the past 10 years, he has worked with with rappers, DJs and graffiti artists in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Pardue employs strategies of methodology and epistemology from urban anthropology, critical race theory, discourse theory, cultural studies and ethnomusicology to his analyses.

School of Medicine researchers found that a malaria drug eased many symptoms of metabolic syndrome in mice. Study findings were published in the November issue of Cell Metabolism, and senior author Clay F. Semenkovich, M.D., professor of medicine and of cell biology and physiology, says funding for a clinical trial has been received.

Seven finalists for the Olin Cup Competition were selected from a pool nearly twice as large as last year’s. At stake in the January finals is a total of $75,000.

Results from School of Medicine research suggest that a drug could save millions in health-care costs by preventing immune attacks following kidney transplants.

Photo by Mary ButkusSchool of Law lecture brings to campus a mother and her daughter’s killer — now a friend and colleague.

Kenneth F. Kelton, Ph.D., professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, has been named the first Arthur Holly Compton Professor in Arts & Sciences. John F. McDonnell, vice chairman of the Board of Trustees and retired chairman of the board of McDonnell Douglas Corp., with JSM Charitable Trust, endowed the new professorship.

Photo by Tim ParkerThe Corpus Delicti: Just Desserts play analyzes the ethics of dissection using a life-sized cadaver from gelatin with fruits and vegetables for organs.

Major Indian film star and social activist Shabana Azmi, will give a talk at 6:30 p.m., Wednesday, November 29, in Graham Chapel on the Washington University Danforth Campus. The lecture, “Bollywood and Beyond,” will explore South Asia’s socio-cultural climate. It is free and open to the public.

On a mammogram, LCIS and ALH typically look like small deposits of calcium.In women whose initial breast biopsies revealed certain rare, yet benign breast conditions, more extensive follow-up surgical biopsies found that up to 25% of them actually had cancer in addition to these benign lesions. Most of the cancers were invasive, meaning the tumors had penetrated normal breast tissue and would require treatment. In the study, conducted at the School of Medicine, the women’s initial biopsies had revealed atypical lobular hyperplasia (ALH) or lobular carcinoma-in-situ (LCIS), conditions that increase the risk of breast cancer, but which are themselves considered benign.