Newsroom Stories

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded David Fike, PhD, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences, $2.4 million to adapt a powerful chemical microscope called the 7F-GEO SIMS for biological samples. The updated instrument’s ability to map the chemistry inside cells will boost research on microbes that are promising candidates for biofuel or bioenergy production.

AT&T, through its signature education initiative AT&T Aspire, has committed $400,000 to the College Prep Program at Washington University in St. Louis. The program helps low-income students from across the St. Louis region connect with other talented students and prepare for success in college.

​A task force created last fall at Washington University in St. Louis to study issues of sexual assault and relationship violence has completed its work and is recommending a number of measures that aim to create a supportive, respectful campus environment where sexual assault is a rare occurrence.

Pratim Biswas, PhD, chair of the Department of Energy, Environmental & Chemical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected to receive the 2015 Lawrence K. Cecil Award in Environmental Chemical Engineering from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.

With the growing understanding of the importance of gut bacteria in human health, researchers at the School of Medicine studied gut motility, measuring the transit time of food moving through the gastrointestinal tract in mice in a way that mimicked the dietary effects of world travel. The study demonstrates ways to uncover how even a single ingredient, such as turmeric, can affect health through interactions of diet and gut microbes.

James V. Wertsch, PhD, founding director of one of the most successful and innovative global scholarship programs in the world, has been named the inaugural David R. Francis Distinguished Professor at Washington University in St. Louis. Wertsch is vice chancellor for international affairs and director of the McDonnell International Scholars Academy.

Political polarization — when public opinion goes to two extremes, without moderates or a real middle ground — is the focus of a lecture series that kicks off Monday, Sept. 28, with a talk by Steven S. Smith, PhD, director of the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government and Public Policy at Washington University in St. Louis.

Cancers have many strategies for avoiding attacks from the immune system. But the more scientists are able to understand about them, the more effectively they will be able to use the immune system to fight cancer. To that end, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified a new strategy.

The Center for Dissemination and Implementation at the Institute for Public Health at Washington University in St. Louis kicks off its 2015-16 speaker series Sept. 30 with talk from Ross A. Hammond, PhD, senior fellow in economic studies at the Brookings Institution, on policy factors that influence health.

​Crunching big data, especially from social networking sites, is one of the hottest areas of study in business schools right now.  A new center at Washington University in St. Louis is teaching students best practices when it comes to data mining and analysis. Seethu Seetharaman, PhD, the W. Patrick McGinnis Professor of Marketing, is the center’s director.