Newsroom Stories

Beginning Jan. 16, students can apply to be a volunteer during the Clinton Global Initiative University (CGI U), to be held at Washington University in St. Louis April 5-7, 2013. Volunteer roles include: serving as on-campus hosts and ushers, assisting with the production and logistics of the event, helping CGI staff with press and media, and supporting CGI’s program staff. Students with skills in photography, video, and social media are encouraged to apply. In addition to working Friday and Saturday, volunteers are required to attend two evening training sessions April 1 and 4.

Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, has been honored with awards from the National Academy of Sciences and the Association of American Medical Colleges for his pioneering research to define the human gut microbiome.

Washington University in St. Louis researcher Michal Grinstein-Weiss, PhD, associate professor of social work at the Brown School and associate director of the Center for Social Development, is lead author on new research that studies loan activity in low- and moderate-income homeowners. The research confirms: financial literacy begins at home. Grinstein-Weiss offers five steps parents can take to drive home the power of the piggy bank.

“The first thing we’re going to do is teach you how to throw a punch,” says senior Melissa Freilich. No, it’s not Boxing 101. Earlier this fall, the Edison Ovations Series welcomed approximately 500 eighth-graders from across St. Louis for a special matinee performance by nationally acclaimed Aquila Theatre.

As a new legislative session begins this week in the state of Missouri, a new study out of the Missouri Budget Project, co-authored by the Brown’s School Timothy McBride, PhD, is released. It examines the effects of potential boost in aid throughout the state but finds rural Missourians would benefit the most in 2014 if lawmakers approve more than $1 billion in new federal funding for Medicaid.

Washington University recently secured a notable achievement: The St. Louis Minority Supplier Development Council (SLMSDC) named the school its Institution of the Year. The award recognizes the university’s ongoing efforts to seek, and provide opportunities for, minority-owned businesses for campus projects.

The third round of Tread the Med, a walking program and competition  open to School of Medicine employees, is under way. Among those participating is medical assistant Deloris Brown, who credits the program with improving her health and helping her lose about 70 pounds. Registration for the program will remain open until Feb. 15.

We would all like to believe that there is a kind of karma in life that guarantees those who cheat eventually pay for their bad behavior, if not immediately, then somewhere down the line. But a study of a new gene in the amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum suggests that, at least for amoebae, it is possible to cheat and get away with it.

Matthew J. Silva, PhD, has been named the Julia and Walter R. Peterson Orthopaedic Research Professor at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Corporations’ religious freedom claims against the Affordable Care Act’s contraception coverage mandate miss a “basic fact of health economics: health insurance, like wages, is compensation that belongs to the employee,” says Elizabeth Sepper, JD, health law expert and associate professor of law at Washington University in St. Louis. Sepper’s scholarship explores the interaction of morality, professional ethics, and law in medicine.