Newsroom Stories

If a severe snow or ice storm causes the University to alter the normal work and/or class schedules, an announcement will be posted on the University’s home page (wustl.edu) and a number of media outlets will air an announcement.

The University is laying plans for how it would respond if a pandemic flu strikes the St. Louis region.

Through Dec. 3, the WUPD office on Shepley Drive in the South 40 will serve as a drop-off location to donate new or gently used winter coats for disadvantaged St. Louisans.

Medical and graduate students who volunteer for science outreach programs don’t just help underrepresented public school students consider careers in science, according to a survey published last week in Science. They also help themselves.

A $7.7 million grant will establish a new center for asthma research at the School of Medicine. Directed by Michael J. Holtzman, M.D., the Selma and Herman Seldin Professor of Medicine, the center will investigate the cause of asthma to develop new treatments for the disease. The center’s funding comes from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health.

Bollywood film star Shabana Azmi will talk about South Asian social issues filtered through her perspective as an actress and a social justice advocate at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, November 29, in Graham Chapel. The program is free and open to the public. Her husband, Bollywood scriptwriter Javed Akhtar, will also give remarks.

More than 80,000 people in the U.S. are on waiting lists for organ transplants. Some will have to wait for the death of a matching donor, but more and more people are receiving organs from living donors. In an effort to close the gap between organ supply and demand, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine, the University of Michigan and the American Society of Transplant Surgeons are studying ways to reimburse living donors for some of their out-of-pocket expenses when they choose to donate an organ.

The Genome Sequencing Center has been awarded a $156 million, four-year grant to use the powerful tools of DNA sequencing to unlock the secrets of cancer and other human diseases. The grant is among the largest awarded to Washington University and one of only three given by the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) to U.S. sequencing centers.

A current student and a recent alumnus from Washington University in St. Louis have been named Rhodes Scholars. They are Aaron F. Mertz, 22, and Leana S. Wen, 23. The two were among 32 U.S. students chosen for graduate study at the University of Oxford in England. Winners of the highly acclaimed award were selected based on high academic achievement, personal integrity, leadership potential and physical vigor.

WenLeana S. Wen, 23, a current student at Washington University School of Medicine, and Aaron F. Mertz, 22, a recent alumnus from Washington University, have been named Rhodes Scholars, according to an announcement Nov. 18 by The Rhodes Trust. They are among 32 U.S. students chosen from 896 nominees for graduate study at the University of Oxford in England.