Newsroom Stories

The air is crisp and cold but the voices will be rich and warm when Winter Opera St. Louis, the youngest of the area’s three professional companies, visits the Danforth University Center Jan. 29. The free performance will launch the spring Chamber Music Series.

Doctors may one day treat some forms of blindness by altering the genetic program of the light-sensing cells of the eye, according to School of Medicine scientists. Working in mice with a disease that causes gradual blindness, the researchers reprogrammed the cells in the eye that enable night vision.

This year, members of the WUSTL community can lend a hand to the many St. Louisans who find themselves homeless – and freezing cold. The Community Service Office is again partnering with the St. Louis Winter Outreach team, and there are a number of ways WUSTL community members can get involved.

Michael Lane, MD, has been named patient safety officer for the Department of Medicine. The position is new for the department, and in the role, Lane will oversee and coordinate safety efforts to help improve health-care outcomes.

Mario Castro, MD, and Angela Brown, MD, will lead a new office in the Department of Medicine that supports faculty members’ career development. The new program will feature workshops and seminars to promote faculty career development in the areas of research, clinical care, education and leadership.

Healthy men and women show little difference in their hearts, except for small electrocardiographic disparities. But new genetic differences found by Washington University in St. Louis researchers in hearts with disease could ultimately lead to personalized treatment of various heart ailments.

Julie Kennedy, a senior publications editor in the Office of Public Affairs, shares this first-person account of her experience traveling to Paris. Kennedy was one of six employees selected to study abroad in an initiative to boost diversity on campus.

Barbara A. Schaal, PhD, became dean of the Faculty of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis on Jan. 1. Schaal, left, chats with Rafia Zafar, PhD, professor of English, of African and African-American studies, and of American culture studies and associate dean for diversity and inclusiveness, and Kimberly Curtis, PhD, assistant dean for graduate student affairs in Arts & Sciences, during a Jan. 16 welcome reception in Schaal’s honor.

Bradley L. Schlaggar, MD, PhD, the A. Ernest and Jane G. Stein Professor of Neurology at Washington University School of Medicine, has been awarded the E. Mead Johnson Award for Pediatric Research. The award is among the most prestigious in pediatric research.​

Estrogen levels drop dramatically in menopause, a time when the risk of urinary tract infections increases significantly. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found new evidence in mice that the two phenomena are connected by more than just timing.