Newsroom Stories

Office for International Students and Scholars and the Career Center offered international students a crash course in putting and driving at Forest Park.

Tiny ghosts, goblins and witches enjoyed face painting and candy at Safe Trick or Treat, a Campus Y tradition.

“Over the last decade, J. Robert Lennon’s literary imagination has grown increasingly morbid, convoluted and peculiar,” writes The New York Times Book Review, “just as his books have grown commensurately more surprising, rigorous and fun.” Lennon, the Visiting Hurst Professor of Creative Writing at Washington University in St. Louis, will host a pair of events Nov. 5 and 7.

On the occasion of the City of Clayton’s centennial year, Washington University’s Assembly Series will present a panel discussion exploring the region’s future prospects and opportunities for growth featuring leading international authorities from our institution: William Powderly, Peter Raven and Holden Thorp. The “Innovation and Infinite Possibilities in the 21st Century” program will begin at 7 p.m Wednesday, November 6 in Simon Hall May Auditorium on the Danforth Campus.

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.