Newsroom Stories

The School of Medicine hosted a sustainability leadership forum March 9 for corporate and regional facilities managers to share how the medical school is approaching sustainability. The forum, titled “Sustaining Sustainability,” was attended by about 75 area leaders.

Nanocages that efficiently convert light to heat are the basis for a targeted form of phototherapy that would destroy tumors without making cancer patients sick.

For years, electronic surveillance has been used to track and capture a host of evil suspects — terrorists, mobsters and spies among them. Keith Woeltje, MD, PhD, associate professor of medicine, relies on electronic surveillance, too. He is a modern-day microbe hunter, tracking bugs that are invisible to the naked eye but capable of causing mayhem in hospitals.

Peter Wyse Jackson, PhD (left), who has been appointed to succeed Peter H. Raven, PhD, the Engelmann Professor of Botany, as president of the Missouri Botanical Garden, visited the Danforth Campus March 3 to meet biology department faculty and to deliver a seminar on international efforts to slow or halt the loss of biodiversity.

Prospective undergraduate students can experience life on the Danforth Campus firsthand throughout March and April as WUSTL hosts Spring Preview for the Class of 2014. During Spring Preview, admitted students can take a tour of campus, and undergraduate schools also offer special programs and tours of their facilities. 

Recent earthquakes have rocked the Chilean wine industry, spilling millions of gallons of stored vintages throughout the region.  A study tour from the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis will visit Chilean vineyards, wineries and exporters next week for a first-hand look at the industry and how it has been affected by the quakes.

The School of Medicine has received a $14.3 million grant through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to expand its high-powered data center for genomics. The facility’s sophisticated computer networks store massive amounts of genomic data used to identify the genetic origins of cancer and other diseases.

Washington University will host its fourth ExxonMobil Bernard Harris Summer Science Camp June 20-July 2 for more than 45 St. Louis-area disadvantaged middle schoolers. The camp is a free, two-week academic residential camp designed to boost middle school students’ skills in math and science and their interest in related careers as well as introduce them to college life. Applications are being accepted through April 2.

The annual African Film Festival will be held Friday through Sunday, March 26-28, on the Danforth Campus, offering “one of its very strongest programs this year of unique and yet universally-relevant films,” says Gaylyn Studlar, PhD, director of the Program in Film and Media Studies in Arts & Sciences and the David May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities.

Renowned art critic George Baker, an editor of the journal October, will discuss the work of contemporary photographer and filmmaker Sharon Lockhart for the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ Public Lecture Series Monday, March 15. Lockhart’s most recent project, Sharon Lockhart: Lunch Break, currently is on view at the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum.