Newsroom Stories

Graduate students from all fields in the humanities and social sciences are invited to apply for a postdoctoral fellowship and two graduate student dissertation fellowships awarded to the Center for the Humanities by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s Sawyer Seminars program.

Neville Grant, M.D., a professor of clinical medicine for nearly 40 years, died Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009. He was 80.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University will host Eero Saarinen: Shaping the Future, the first retrospective to explore the complete career of the acclaimed Finnish- American architect. The exhibit will remain on view at the Kemper Museum through April 27. A second exhibition, On the Riverfront: St. Louis and the Gateway Arch, highlights the history of the St. Louis waterfront and includes selected submissions from the 1947 competition, including Saarinen’s own entry, subsequent drawings and models, on view in Steinberg Hall through March 9.

Steven C. Hause, Ph.D., senior scholar in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, has received the Innovative Entrepreneurship Education Course Award from the U.S. Association of Small Business and Entrepreneurship for his course, “Economic History and Entrepreneurialism in Modern Western Civilization.”

Three dozen students from Washington University in St. Louis have a tough assignment: Determine the financial implications of Turkey’s application to join the European Union and further enlargement of EU membership.

Half of the immune system has a hidden talent, researchers at the School of Medicine have discovered. They found the innate immune system, long recognized as a specialist in rapidly and aggressively combating invaders, has cells that can learn from experience and fight better when called into battle a second time. Scientists previously thought any such ability was limited to the immune system’s other major branch, the adaptive immune system.

Two international teams of researchers have made significant gains in understanding the genetic basis of psoriasis, a chronic skin condition that can be debilitating in some patients. Their research, involving thousands of patients, is reported in two studies published this week in the advance online Nature Genetics.

Do you have a colleague on staff that goes above and beyond to help students, faculty or fellow staff members? Help WUSTL recognize that employee’s efforts by nominating him or her for the Gloria W. White Distinguished Service Award. Nominations are due Feb. 20.

A new brain-imaging study is shedding light on what it means to “get lost” in a good book — suggesting that readers create vivid mental simulations of the sounds, sights, tastes and movements described in a textual narrative while simultaneously activating brain regions used to process similar experiences in real life.

What is the proper role of American higher education in shaping the values and ambitions of a free democratic society, and more specifically, what are Washington University’s responsibilities as a citizen of the greater St. Louis community, the nation and the world? Getting the campus and surrounding community to reflect on these questions is the goal of the Master of Liberal Arts program’s “Democracy and the University” seminar series.