Newsroom Stories

St. Louis’ Gateway Arch turns 50 Oct. 28. Corban Swain, a Washington University in St. Louis undergraduate in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, recently took top prize in a photo contest celebrating the Arch’s anniversary, with an upside-down image of the beloved, iconic landmark.

Images captured in and around the Washington University campuses. For captions, click on the “i” in the upper left corner.

​David M. Becker, JD, Joseph H. Zumbalen Professor of the Law of Property Emeritus, will be honored during a ceremony Nov. 14 with a $25,000 tribute from the Elizabeth Hurlock Beckman Award Trust for motivating a former student to make a difference in his or her community.​

Washington University in St. Louis startups are having an impact on the St. Louis community. A new research project from the Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship shows just how much the university, through an innovative course called The Hatchery, has helped foster entrepreneurship and innovation on campus, in St. Louis and beyond.

Andrew Flachs, a sociocultural anthropology graduate student in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded the Political Ecology Society Eric Wolf Prize for the best article-length paper based in substantive field research that makes an innovative contribution to political ecology.

​Through the generous support of alumni and friends of Washington University, the John M. Olin Library will be transformed into a center for 21st century scholarship.

Arpita Bose, PhD, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named a Packard Fellow, a prestigious distinction awarded to only 18 top young researchers nationwide this year. Bose plans to use the grant to work with unusual microbes that can take electrons directly from an outside source to draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide or make sustainable biofuels.

New research shows that an ancient protein that protects bacteria from bursting also helps pollen survive the dangerous transition from desiccated to hydrated once it lands on the female flower. But in pollen’s case, the protein has evolved to provide just the right amount of internal pressure: enough to power cell growth but not so much that the pollen bursts and dies.

​​Timothy J. Ley, MD, a leukemia researcher and hematologist at the School of Medicine, has received a seven-year, $6.4 million Outstanding Investigator Award from the National Cancer Institute (NCI) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The funding will allow him to continue research aimed at understanding the mutations that initiate acute myeloid leukemia (AML), and how they might be targeted with new approaches.

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis, led by Srikanth Singamaneni, PhD, associate professor of materials science in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, are using color-shifting nanoparticles of ​gold, combined with specifically engineered artificial antibodies, to detect biochemical signs of kidney damage.​