Newsroom Stories

​The Lifelong Learning Institute of Washington University in St. Louis is celebrating in 2015 its 20th anniversary of educating adults age 55 or older. Since its founding, the program has served some 2,000 students from across the region and has offered hundreds of courses, all taught by fellow students or, in institute lingo, “facilitators.”

​​The Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis announces the finalists for the second Global Impact Award. The award, given with the support of Suren G. Dutia (BS ’63, AB, MS ’67) and his wife, Jas K. Grewal, honors the vision and passion of WashU students, postdoctoral researchers and young alumni who create scalable and sustainable ventures with global impact.

Calming a neural circuit in the brain can alleviate stress in mice, according to new research at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis that lays the foundation for understanding stress and anxiety in people. The researchers also showed they could shine a light into the brain to activate the stress response in mice that had not been exposed to stressful situations.

Researchers led by Gregory Storch, MD, have developed a diagnostic test to quickly detect enterovirus D68 (EV-D68), a respiratory virus that caused unusually severe illness in children last summer and fall. The outbreak caused infections at an unprecedented rate, with over 1,000 confirmed cases and 14 reported deaths nationwide, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The National Archives has awarded $150,000 to Washington University Libraries’ Film & Media Archive for its “Eyes on the Prize” interview digitization and reassembly project.​

For Americans, the likelihood of experiencing relative poverty at least once in their lifetime is surprisingly high, finds a new study from noted poverty expert Mark Rank, PhD, professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

New insight into one of the most common inherited causes of brain tumors may help physicians diagnose and treat the learning disabilities that often accompany the condition, neurofibromotosis 1. The School of Medicine’s David H. Gutmann is the study’s senior author. 

Beginning this September, changes to the telephone system used on the Washington University Medical Center campus and at all BJC HealthCare facilities will require employees to “Dial 10” when placing calls to internal and external numbers.

Images captured in and around the Washington University campuses.

Randall J. Bateman, MD, the Charles F. and Joanne Knight Distinguished Professor of Neurology at the School of Medicine, has received a MetLife Foundation Award for Medical Research.  Bateman, a leader in Alzheimer’s disease research, is the university’s fifth researcher to receive the prize.