Newsroom Stories

PeipertJeffrey Peipert has been named the Robert J. Terry Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the School of Medicine. The appointment was announced by Larry J. Shapiro, executive vice chancellor for medical affairs and dean of the School of Medicine. Peipert is the first person to hold the professorship, which was established in honor of Robert J. Terry, professor and head of the School of Medicine’s Department of Anatomy from 1900 to 1941.

Evan Kharasch has been named the Russell D. and Mary B. Shelden Professor of Anesthesiology at the School of Medicine. This is the second anesthesiology professorship established through gifts from the Sheldens. Russell Shelden is an anesthesiologist and graduate of the School of Medicine who earned his medical degree in 1949.

Diana MichenerDeborah EisenbergAcclaimed fiction writer Deborah Eisenberg, the visiting Fannie Hurst Professor of Creative Literature, will read from her work Feb. 8 and host a Q&A session Feb. 15. Eisenberg is the author of five short story collections, most recently Twilight of the Super Heroes: Stories (2006).

Paul Michael Lützeler, Ph.D., Rosa May Distinguished University Professor in the Humanities in Arts & Sciences, will receive the Austrian Great Medal of Merit in a ceremony at the University Feb. 8. Christoph Thun-Hohenstein, director of the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York, will present the award.

Bacterium that could be used in bioterrorism is significantly slowed when it can’t make use of a key protein, School of Medicine researchers found.

Washington University’s Olin School of Business will hold the 7th annual Super Advertising Bowl from 3-5 p.m. February 4, 2007. The annual event brings together Olin marketing students and faculty to critique the television commercials that air during the Super Bowl. This year Olin students will be looking for “Commercials that Win the Consumer’s Mind”—those standout ads that will have people talking around the water cooler on Monday. The student-organized activity also raises funds for the Arthritis Foundation’s St. Louis Chapter.

Michael Marrah and Bradley Castanho have been named assistant vice chancellors for research and co-directors of the Office of Technology Management (OTM) at Washington University. Together, they bring expertise in business, science and law to the OTM, which is charged with identifying University discoveries that have commercial potential and licensing them to private companies, where the technology can be developed for the benefit of the public.

Washington University in St. Louis Sports Hall of Fame member Vaughan “Bing” Devine died Saturday at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis. He was 90. A member of the Bears’ baseball and basketball teams, Devine graduated from Washington University in 1938 with a degree in liberal arts. He was part of the inaugural class in the WU Sports Hall of Fame in 1992.

Studying stars has never been so easy, thanks to Ernst K. Zinner, Ph.D., research professor of physics and of earth and planetary sciences, both in Arts & Sciences, at Washington University. For the past 30-plus years, Zinner has helped develop and fine-tune increasingly sophisticated instruments that allow researchers to get detailed information about circumstellar and interstellar dust — actual stardust — right in their own labs. These precision instruments use a measurement technique called secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS). To recognize Zinner’s important contributions to the development of SIMS and its many applications in the earth and space sciences, a scientific symposium will be held Feb. 3-4 in Crow Hall, Room 201.

Scientists at the School of Medicine in St. Louis and the biotech firm Nimblegen Systems Inc. have successfully tested a technique for identifying newly recognized DNA variations that may influence disease risk. Rather than focus on errors and alterations in DNA sequence, the new technique highlights variations in the number of copies of a particular gene.