Newsroom Stories

On Saturday, Nov. 2, Washington University’s “family” will come from near and far to gather in St. Louis and celebrate its founding in 1853. The annual Founders Day dinner and ceremony, sponsored by the WUSTL Alumni Association, will feature an address by Jon Huntsman Jr., former U.S. ambassador to China. Other highlights include the presentation of Distinguished Faculty and Alumni awards and the Robert S. Brookings Awards.

The newly renovated Whittemore House has a new look, a new menu and its old chef. Jim Huber is back in the Whittemore House kitchen serving local food with an international flair. The historic club also is serving weekday breakfast, Wednesday bistro dinners and monthly wine dinners.

A small molecule called VIP, known to synchronize time-keeping neurons in the brain’s biological clock, has the startling effect of desynchronizing them at higher dosages, says a research team at Washington University in St. Louis. Neurons knocked for a loop by a burst of VIP are better able to re-synchronize to abrupt shifts in the light-dark cycle like those that make jet lag or shift work so miserable.

University of Missouri-St. Louis chancellor emeritus Blanche Touhill and Washington University emeritus chancellor William Danforth led the formation of a joint undergraduate engineering program between the two schools, which saw its first class in the fall of 1993. Fast-forward 20 years and it has graduated nearly 650 students. Since 2008 the program has grown nearly 50 percent, and about 75 percent of the graduates stay in the St. Louis area.

Christopher Gill, PhD, has received a four-year, $398,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to promote the improved safety of cyber-physical systems such as cars and planes.

Researchers at the School of Medicine have identified changes in the brains of children growing up in poverty. Those changes can lead to lifelong problems like depression, learning difficulties and limitations in the ability to cope with stress. But the study showed that the extent of those changes was influenced strongly by whether parents were attentive and nurturing. Pictured is principal investigator Joan L. Luby, MD.

School of Medicine faculty recently presented about 20 ideas to Washington University students during IDEA Labs’ inaugural ‘Problem Day’ in hopes that they might be able to devise solutions. IDEA Labs — which stands for Innovation, Design & Engineering in Action — is a bioengineering design incubator founded last year as a joint venture of the schools of Medicine and Engineering & Applied Science and the Division of Biology & Biomedical Sciences.

Athletes with concussions aren’t allowed to compete again right away, and a Washington University concussion expert advises that children with concussions also may not be able to go back to the classroom right away. Pictured is an image of the brain.

Washington University School of Law will celebrate 40 years of clinical education and community collaborations at the 13th annual Access to Equal Justice Conference from noon-4 p.m. Friday, Nov. 1, in Anheuser-Busch Hall’s Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom. The conference is free and open to students, faculty, staff and the public.

The final results of a stroke-prevention study in patients with narrowed brain arteries confirm earlier findings: Medication plus lifestyle changes are safer and more effective for preventing stroke than a surgical technique called stenting. Pictured is a narrowed brain artery kept open with a stent.