Newsroom Stories

Hillary Anger Elfenbein, professor of organizational behavior in Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, has been installed as the John K. and Ellen A. Wallace Distinguished Professor.

Washington University will open the academic year on Monday, Aug. 29, with a universitywide gathering to reflect upon recent events, consider our individual and collective roles in the community, and celebrate our shared, core values. “Reflections: Unity, Social Justice & Peace” will begin at 4 p.m. in Graham Chapel.

The class of 2020 was chosen among a field of 29,200 applicants and represents the largest class in Washington University’s 163-year history. It also is the most diverse. Some 231 students — 13 percent — are Pell grant-eligible, and 123 are the first in their families to attend college.

An international team of researchers, including Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has identified eight additional types of cancer linked to excess weight and obesity: stomach, liver, gall bladder, pancreas, ovary, meningioma (a type of brain tumor), thyroid cancer and the blood cancer multiple myeloma. Limiting weight gain over the decades could help to reduce the risk of these cancers, the data suggest.

Nearly 90 percent of companies in the United States use some form of employee wellness program – from gym memberships to health screenings to flu shots – all designed to improve health. A study currently under review and co-authored by a faculty member at Washington University in St. Louis empirically tested how these programs affect worker productivity. The research paired individual medical data from employees taking part in a work-based wellness program to their productivity rates over time.

Washington University will welcome some 1,780 first-year students — the largest class in its 163-year history. The Class of 2020 hails from all 50 states and 25 countries. Some 300 student, faculty and staff volunteers will assist students move in the residence halls throughout the day.

For all the advances of modern medicine, health-care architecture has long been guided by custom and intuition rather than research and testing. That’s changing, thanks to an emerging field known as evidence-based design, said Xiaobo Quan, director of Washington University’s newly formed Center for Health Research & Design.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified the protein that norovirus uses to invade cells. The discovery, in mice, provides new ways to study a virus notoriously hard to work with and may lead to treatments or a vaccine.

St. Louis’ leading employers, school districts and Washington University’s Institute for School Partnership have united to form STEMpact, an organization dedicated to improving improve science, technology, engineering and math education when it matters most — elementary school.

But a new study in young children with asthma — co-authored by the School of Medicine’s Leonard B. Bacharier, MD — compared acetaminophen to ibuprofen. It showed no difference in the severity of asthma symptoms between the two medications.