Newsroom Stories

Shin-Ichiro Imai, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of developmental biology and of medicine, remains smiling while receiving a 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine Jan. 7 from Melanie Dill, a registered nurse for the Student and Employee Health Services at the School of Medicine. Despite an early morning snowstorm, many faculty, staff and students turned out to receive a vaccine. A vaccine clinic for Danforth Campus faculty, staff and students is planned for early February.

Four WUSTL faculty have been named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. The highest honor awarded by AAAS, the rank of fellow is bestowed upon members by their peers in recognition of scientifically or socially distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.

Nejla Yatkin, the 2010 Marcus Artist in the Performing Arts Department in Arts & Sciences’ Dance Program, will present an informal concert of her work at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 26. Yatkin — who was born and raised in Berlin but has Turkish roots — draws on a range of dance traditions to explore issues of memory, migration, identity and multiculturalism.

Hugh Macdonald, the Avis Blewett Professor of Music in Arts & Sciences, will conduct a concert of late works by Richard Strauss at 8 p.m. Monday, Jan. 25, in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall. The performance, which celebrates Macdonald’s 70th birthday, will feature musicians from the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra and from the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences.  

Undergraduate tuition at Washington University in St. Louis will be $39,400 for the 2010-11 academic year — a $1,600 (4.2 percent) increase over the 2009-10 current academic tuition of $37,800. The required student activity fee will total $394, and the student health fee will be no more than $580. Barbara A. Feiner, vice chancellor for finance, made the announcement.

Two days before the Haiti earthquake, Lora Iannotti, Ph.D., nutrition and public health expert from the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, traveled to Port-au-Prince and Leogane, Haiti, to continue her research about undernutrition and disease prevention in young children. The massive tremor changed her focus from research for the future to survival, with her team helping children in the aftermath of the quake.

WUSTL faculty from law and political science were quick to offer opinions to the news media about implications of a controversial Jan. 21 ruling by the The U.S. Supreme Court that will allow corporations and unions to spend freely in elections, a decision many expect to shift the balance of political power.

The Assembly Series annually serves up topics for almost every appetite, and this spring the series offers speakers from A to Z. Representing the broad interests of the Washington University community, the Assembly Series begins Wednesday, Jan. 27, with environmentalist Amory Lovins and concludes April 21 with playwright and director Mary Zimmerman.

The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn campaign spending limits for corporations “strikes a serious blow against efforts to stem the dominance of corporations in our political process,” says Gregory  P. Magarian, J.D., constitutional and election law expert at Washington University in St. Louis.  “The Court overruled a longstanding decision that had struck a sensible, carefully drawn balance between the self-interest of corporations and interests of integrity and fairness in the political process.“

HIV infection or the treatments used to control it are prematurely aging the brain, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of California-San Diego have found. Blood flow in the brains of HIV patients is reduced to levels normally seen in uninfected patients 15 to 20 years older.