Newsroom Stories

Feeding premature babies mostly breast milk during the first month of life appears to spur more robust brain growth, compared with babies given little or no breast milk, finds researchers from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Cathy Rodgers, former fashion design faculty member in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, died April 6 at her home in Ladue. She was 87. She taught tailoring and pattern-making to generations of designers, including such fashion luminaries as Carolyne Roehm, Kay Unger, Judd Waddell and Paul Dillinger.

Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis are using nanoparticle technology in an effort to meet the ever-increasing demand for food. Their innovative technique boosts the growth of a protein-rich bean by improving the way it absorbs nutrients, while reducing the need for fertilizer.

Each academic year, students from Washington University distinguish themselves at two annual mathematics competitions: The North American Putnam Competition, in which this year the team finished eighth; and the Missouri Collegiate Mathematics Competition, in which the team tied for first with a perfect score.

Washington University in St. Louis will award five honorary degrees during the university’s 155th Commencement May 20. During the ceremony, which will begin at 8:30 a.m. in Brookings Quadrangle on the Danforth Campus, the university will bestow academic degrees on approximately 2,800 members of the Class of 2016.

A podcast featuring Mosaic Whispers music directors Katie Greenberg and Hannah Lacava, and vocal percussionist Rohan Khazanchi. The Washington University a capella group competes in a national competition Saturday, April 30, at the Beacon Theatre in New York.

Bolstering new federal guidelines that advise primary care doctors to carefully weigh the prescribing of opioid painkillers, two experts at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are recommending that surgeons also consider cutting back on the number of take-home opioid pills prescribed to patients after surgery.

Larry L. Jacoby, an internationally recognized scholar of human memory and a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Sophomore Sarah Longyear died by suicide April 22 in her hometown of Palo Alto, Calif. She was 19. Advisers remember her as a kind and curious student who excelled academically but struggled with depression.

This spring, theory-heavy Washington University in St. Louis geology students went on a field trip to southeastern Spain with field-trained students from Trinity College, Dublin. What they learned from each other transcended earth — and time.