Newsroom Stories

Researchers from the McKelvey School of Engineering and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are one step closer to delivering precise amounts of medication to exact location, repurposing an existing imaging “painting” method.

Richard Alley, the Evan Pugh Professor of Geosciences at Pennsylvania State University, will deliver the McDonnell Distinguished Lecture on March 6 at Washington University in St. Louis. Alley’s lecture is titled “Finding the Good News on Energy and Environment.”

Tobacco control experts at Washington University in St. Louis would welcome a crackdown on e-cigarette commercials on television and radio. But advertising restrictions, as recently suggested by a member of the Federal Communications Commission, are just one way to curb the vaping epidemic among America’s youth, said Doug Luke, professor at the Brown School and director of the Center for Public Health Systems Science.

Greg Bowman, at the Washington University School of Medicine, is leading one of the largest crowd-sourced computational biology projects in the world. Called Folding@home, it’s aimed at understanding how proteins fold into their proper shapes. Bowman understands the importance of protein folding more than most. He became legally blind by age 9 due to a condition caused when a protein doesn’t fold properly.

Amy Hauft, the Leslie Waggener Professor in Sculpture at the University of Texas at Austin, has been appointed director of the College & Graduate School of Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. Also joining the Sam Fox School faculty will be sculptor Jack Risley, the Meredith and Cornelia long Chair of Art and Art History at UT Austin.

New research from Gary Patti’s laboratory in Arts & Sciences shows that when cells divide rapidly, their mitochondria are fused together. In this configuration, the cell is able to more efficiently use oxygen for energy. This work illuminates the inner workings of dividing cells and shows how mitochondria combine to help cells to multiply in unexpected ways.

A team of engineers in the McKelvey School of Engineering has developed a high-powered fuel cell that operates at double the voltage of today’s commercial fuel cells. It could power underwater vehicles, drones and eventually electric aircraft at a significantly lower cost.

Jianjun Guan, an engineer at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is developing a new material that would deliver drugs directly to the damaged part of the heart to preserve the support network.

The fifth annual Day of Discovery, Dialogue & Action event featured talks, workshops and panel discussions designed to spark questions and conversations on both the Danforth and Medical Campuses, as well as provide a tool kit for purposeful discussion moving forward.

Over-testing for urinary tract infections (UTIs) leads to unnecessary antibiotic use, which spreads antibiotic resistance. Infectious disease specialists at the School of Medicine made changes to hospital procedures that cut urine tests by nearly half without compromising doctors’ abilities to detect UTIs.