Newsroom Stories

Members of the WU Racing Team revealed the 2013 race car April 25 in the Danforth University Center. The team and car will travel to Michigan International Speedway next month to participate in the Formula Society of Automotive Engineers competition.

The Women’s Society of Washington University handed out awards at its annual meeting April 17. Harriet Switzer, center, visits with the two seniors who received a leadership award named in her honor. They are Jennifer Head, far left, and Melany Lopez.

The annual Freshman Finale celebration was held on Tuesday, April 23 in College Hall on the South 40. Sponsored by the First Year Center and Freshman Class Council, the event included remarks from College of Arts & Sciences Dean Jennifer R. Smith, PhD, and a representative of the freshman class, as well as student performances. Awards were presented to outstanding members of the Washington University community who have had a positive impact on new students in their first year.

The School of Engineering & Applied Science celebrated five of its top alumni during the 2013 Alumni Achievement Awards dinner April 18 at the Coronado Ballroom in St. Louis. The school presented four Alumni Achievement Awards, one Young Alumni Award and the Dean’s Award.

St. Louis is becoming widely recognized as a hub for entrepreneurship, and WUSTL students are taking advantage of the close proximity to great resources by starting their own business ventures — with the help of a groundbreaking class. The Hatchery, offered by Olin Business School but open to all university undergraduate students, is one of the university’s capstone entrepreneurship courses. Here, students hold the Olin Cup, the top prize in the top commercial entrepreneurship competition on campus.

This year the Spector Prize has been awarded to two students, Megan Kelly and Jennifer Stevens.The prize, given by the Department of Biology in memory of a 1938 WUSTL graduate, recognizes outstanding undergraduate achievement in research. Kelly did research on the chemical signals used by malaria parasites and Stevens on evolutionary trade-offs in weakly electric fish.

He’s dashing, debonair and fluent in at least six languages. He’s escaped the insides of balloons and roller-bladed on Letterman. He can honk Beethoven’s Fifth in a space-suit of bicycle horns. He is Michel Lauzière, the Master of Unusual Comedy, and he’s coming to Edison Theatre.

To highlight career flexibility benefits, the Office of Faculty Affairs is hosting faculty forums on family resources, work-life fit and career paths from noon-1 May 6-8 in Schwarz Auditorium. The program is free for School of Medicine faculty and includes lunch. Shown, Bess Marshall, MD, associate professor of pediatrics, used the flexibility benefit to work part time when a relative suffered a heart attack.

School of Medicine researchers have described a missing link in understanding how damage to the body’s cellular power plants leads to Parkinson’s disease and some forms of heart failure. A mouse heart, in gray, shows signs of heart failure because it is missing a newly discovered key molecule in the process that culls unhealthy mitochondria from cells. Superimposed on the heart is a fruit fly heart tube, shown in color. It shows signs of failure because it is missing another key molecule in mitochondrial quality control.

​Rebecca Messbarger, PhD, professor of Italian, has a great start to her next book. Not only did she win two awards for an article summarizing her book idea, next fall she will have more time and resources to devote to writing thanks to her faculty fellowship in the Center for Humanities.