Newsroom Stories

Friday, May 17, is National Bike to Work Day. For nearly 20 years, School of Medicine faculty Laura Bierut and Brad Evanoff have been riding their bikes to work. Earlier this week, they rode their tandem bike to the Medical Campus. The two encourage others to ride their bikes to work, too.

Five Washington University scientists, including Jung-Tsung Shen, PhD, recently received Bear Cub grants. The funding helps researchers commercialize their discoveries.

Washington University’s 152nd Commencement begins at 8:30 a.m. Friday, May 17, in Brookings Quadrangle. The university will award 2,873 degrees to 2,752 undergraduate, graduate and professional students. The university also will bestow honorary degrees on six individuals, including Commencement speaker Cory Booker, mayor of Newark, N.J.

An executive branch Inspector General played a critical role in exposing the IRS’s practice of targeting Tea Party groups, says Kathleen Clark, JD, anti-corruption expert and professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. “As we see with the IRS controversy, an Inspector General investigation can cause heads to roll. Perhaps that’s why some government agencies have been without an Inspector General for a very long time – measured not in months, but in years.” Clark notes that the State Department has been without an Inspector General for more than five years.

Harrison “Jack” Schmitt, a geologist and Apollo 17 astronaut, will be visiting Washington University in St. Louis the week of May 20 for a round of activities centered on lunar exploration, including a seminar about Schmitt’s geological exploration of the Moon’s Valley of Taurus-Littrow, an “exploration forum” and the review meeting of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera’s team, which is being hosted by WUSTL’s Brad Jolliff.

Engineering students Andrew Brimer and Abigail Cohen have created a low-cost, portable spirometer which they hope will revolutionize the way asthma and other chronic respiratory diseases are diagnosed and treated. They credit the entrepreneurial spirit of Washington University with helping to nuture and push their device along.

​Notes from No Man’s Land, the book selected for Washington University’s 2013-14 First Year Reading Program, examines race in America through the unique perspective of author Eula Biss. Biss weaves her own experiences through essays about mixed families, lynchings, Americans behaving badly in Mexico, being a white reporter at an African-American newspaper, teaching at an inner city school and much more.​

Bethany Ehlmann, who graduated from WUSTL in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in earth and planetary science, has been selected as one of 17 Emerging Explorers by National Geographic. The Emerging Explorers Program recognizes and supports uniquely gifted and inspiring adventurers, scientists and innovators who are at the forefront of discovery, adventure and global problem-solving while still early in their careers.

Three WUSTL doctoral candidates were inducted into the Edward A. Bouchet Graduate Honor Society at the annual Bouchet Conference on Diversity in Graduate Education April 19-20 at Yale University. The Bouchet Society, named for the first African American to earn a doctorate in the United States, recognizes outstanding scholarly achievement and promotes diversity and excellence in doctoral education and the professoriate.

The Washington University School of Law Women’s Law Caucus (WLC) recently gathered with faculty, alumni, judges and attorneys to honor the organization’s 40th anniversary and to observe the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day. As part of the annual celebration, the WLC also presented the International Women’s Day honorary awards.