Newsroom Stories

Andrew Brimer and Abigail Cohen, May graduates from the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis and co-founders of the med-tech startup Sparo Labs, have won the $150,000 CIMIT Student Technology Prize for Primary Care, bringing their total competition winnings to more than $275,000.

My Name Is Strong, a Clinton Global Initiative project, hosts an art exhibit Friday, Sept. 20 at Union Avenue Church. Some 45 works, including this piece(left) by Brown School student Kyle Brandt-Lubart, explore the issue of gender-based violence and celebrate the strength of its survivors.

More than 1,000 science researchers from around the world descended upon St. Louis during the second week of August for what Provost Holden Thorp, PhD, wittingly referred to as “Photo-palooza” for the gathering’s focus on photosynthesis research. Washington University’s International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES) served as host to the 11th Workshop on Cyanobacteria and the Photosynthetic Antenna Research Center (PARC) hosted the Light Harvesting Satellite Meeting 2013.

Philip Bayly, PhD, the Lilyan and E. Lisle Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and chair the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science, has received a three-year, $429,222 grant from the National Science Foundation to study mehanical properties in the brain.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will launch its 2013-14 exhibition season with Rashid Johnson: Message to Our Folks and American Places: Painting the Landscape in the Nineteenth Century, both opening Sept. 20. Next spring, the museum will feature In the Aftermath of Trauma, a survey of contemporary video installations, and On the Thresholds of Space-Making, which explores the work of the influential architect Shinohara Kazuo.

In a career stretching more than five decades, Judy Collins has been a piano prodigy, an anti-war activist and a chart-topping, Grammy Award-winning pop icon. On Oct. 12, the Edison Ovations Series at Washington University in St. Louis will welcome Collins for a special, one-night-only performance.

Faculty fellows open their doors to South 40 residents looking for advice, friendship and brownies. Veteran fellow Brian Carpenter says the 15-year old program builds trust and relationships between students and professors and has fundamentally changed the South 40 experience.

​Public health is becoming one of the most pressing social concerns facing the global community, and it’s an issue Alfredo Palacio recognized years ago as president of the Republic of Ecuador. Palacio will visit Washington University during its annual Global Health Week Sept. 23-27 and give an Assembly Series talk on “Government and Health Care: Perspectives from a President and a Physician” at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 25, in Graham Chapel.

H. James Wedner, MD, (left) has been installed as the Dr. Phillip and Arleen Korenblat Professor at the School of Medicine, where he serves as chief of the division of allergy and clinical immunology. The named professorship, a gift from Jess and Alice Yawitz, honors their longtime friend and physician, Dr. Phillip E. Korenblat, and his wife, Arleen.

​Anti-abortion groups are well known for demonstrating and sidewalk counseling at women’s reproductive health facilities, but a Massachusetts statute criminalizes even peaceful expression on public sidewalks near these clinics. An upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case will determine the constitutionality of Massachusetts’ selective exclusion law, which applies only to streets and sidewalks near reproductive health-care facilities. “If Massachusetts can close off the sidewalks surrounding reproductive health centers to peaceful expressive activity, then the government can prohibit expression in a wide range of circumstances,” says John Inazu, JD, First Amendment expert and associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis.​