Newsroom Stories

Mark W. Smith, JD, assistant vice chancellor and director of the Career Center, has been promoted to associate vice chancellor for students and will continue as director of the Career Center, announced Sharon Stahl, vice chancellor for students. In his new role, he will also oversee the Office for International Students and Scholars.

The Refund to Savings Initiative, the largest savings experiment ever conducted in the United States, begins with this tax season and is expected to reach almost 1.2 million households within the next few months. The project is a novel collaboration of university researchers, led by Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, associate director of the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, and corporate partner Intuit Inc., the maker of TurboTax software, Quicken Books and Mint. This groundbreaking project is ushering in a new way of doing research.

Severely malnourished children are far more likely to recover and survive when given antibiotics along with a therapeutic peanut-butter based food than children who are treated with the therapeutic food alone, researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found. Indi Trehan, MD, the study’s lead author, shows parents in Malawi how to measure medication.

Eric Hoffman, professor of practice in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, has won a national 2013 Young Architects Award from the American Institute of Architects. Hoffman is both the first Sam Fox School faculty member and the first Sam Fox School alumnus to receive the honor, among the highest available to architects in the early stages of their careers.

A study of young twins in Malawi, in sub-Saharan Africa, finds that bacteria living in the intestine are an underlying cause of a form of severe acute childhood malnutrition.

With its fractured spaces and multiple viewpoints, Cubism marked a radical break fromWestern painting’s long tradition of naturalistic depiction. But even Cubism had its influences — among them, the visual techniques of early cinema. In February, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and KDHX Media Arts will help contemporary filmmakers return the favor with the Kemper Braque Film Challenge.

In the decades ahead, China will have a very large older population, with many older adults who are relatively healthy and interested in being actively engaged in their communities. Contributions of older adults will be necessary for social and economic development of families, communities and society. Peking University Press recently published Productive Aging in the World: Toward Evidence-Based Practice and Policy. The book is the result of a conference on productive aging in August 2011 at Peking University, co-organized by the Center for Social Development (CSD) at Washington University in St. Louis, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and Peking University in Beijing.​

The lecture by playwright Sarah Ruhl, scheduled for noon Thursday, Jan. 31, in the Ann W. Olin Women’s Building, has been postponed.

Jung-Tsung Shen, PhD, assistant professor of electrical & systems engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award (CAREER) from the National Science Foundation.

Jack Dorsey, founder of Twitter, and Salman Khan, founder of the Khan Academy, will join President Bill Clinton at the 2013 Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U) at Washington University in St. Louis April 5-7, 2013.