Newsroom Stories

Former School of Engineering & Applied Science Dean James McKelvey received the Search Award for outstanding citizen of Washington University at the annual Eliot Society dinner held this year on April 23 at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. In addition to the award presentation, Eliot Society members were treated to a talk by author James Bradley.

Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, director of the Center for Genome Sciences and Systems Biology, has won the 2014 Passano Foundation Award for his pioneering studies showing how the trillions of microbes that live in the gut influence human health.

On Sunday, May 4, dozens of models will take the stage wearing scores of outfits by 26 aspiring designer from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. Here are some highlights from the senior class.

Washington University in St. Louis is moving forward with a bold and impactful plan to increase solar output on all campuses by 1,150 percent over current levels by this fall. The project demonstrates the university’s commitment to sustainable operations and to reducing its environmental impact in the St. Louis region and beyond.

When Andrea D’Angelo learned that her father, John D’Angelo, needed a new kidney, she decided she would donate one of hers. The surgeries were performed by Washington University transplant surgeons at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and were successful. Now, the family shares its story to educate and encourage others.

Winning teams in the I-CARES Student Competition displayed their sustainability projects on the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis last week. The annual competition asks students to propose a physical installation in the area of climate change, renewable energy or sustainable design.

Washington University in St. Louis will award six honorary degrees during the university’s 153rd Commencement May 16. During the ceremony, which will begin at 8:30 a.m. in Brookings Quadrangle on the Danforth Campus, WUSTL will bestow academic degrees on approximately 2,800 members of the Class of 2014.

The Brown School’s third annual Research Without Walls student symposium was held April 22 in the hallways of Brown and Goldfarb halls on the Danforth Campus, with students such as Jaclyne Smith presenting projects and research worked on throughout the academic year.

Scientists are beginning to talk about re-engineering crop plants so that, like legumes, they will have on-site nitrogen-fixing systems, either in root nodules or in the plant cells themselves. The structure of a protein called NolR that acts as a master off-switch for the nodulation process, published in the April 29 issue of PNAS, brings them one step closer to this goal. 

An interdisciplinary group of graduate students including Washington University’s (from left) Anurag Agarwal, Whitney Grither and Hirak Biswas was one of 10 winning teams in the Breast Cancer Startup Challenge. The international competition aimed to bring breast cancer discoveries out of the lab and closer to market to help patients.