Newsroom Stories

Robert Mecham, PhD, has been named interim head of the Department of Cell Biology and Physiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Washington University in St. Louis and the City of St. Louis have announced the eight teams selected to move to the final round of the Sustainable Land Lab competition. The competition is the first of its kind in St. Louis where anyone can compete for the opportunity to create a two-year demonstration project to transform a vacant lot into an asset that advances sustainability.

If the answer to a poem is another poem, the answer to music, clearly, is more music. On Feb. 24, the WUSTL Wind Ensemble will pair music by Charles Gounod and Johann Sebastian Bach with works from two contemporary composers in a free concert titled “The Old and the New.”

Holden Thorp, PhD, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) and a highly respected research scientist and academic leader, will become provost of Washington University in St. Louis on July 1, according to Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. He will succeed Edward S. Macias, PhD, who has served as chief academic officer for the past 25 years.

An undergraduate student at WUSTL helped create and launch a mobile app that helps students track the campus circulator shuttle. It’s called the “WUSTL Circulator,” and on its first day, it had up to four times as many downloads as typical new university apps.

The grand opening of the Washington University in St. Louis Institute for School Partnership (ISP) MySci Resource Center at 6601 Vernon Ave. in University City, Mo., takes place at 4 p.m. Monday, Feb. 18.

Sustainability and economic growth: two desirable goals which should demonstrably complement one another, especially in our cities. But how? On Feb. 21, the Sam Fox School and the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C., will present The Innovative Metropolis, a daylong symposium (and web simulcast) on fostering economic competitiveness through sustainable urban design.

Great literature speaks to us across the years and miles. In The Eternal City, her National Book Award-nominated collection, poet Kathleen Graber speaks back, offering reflective yet surprisingly conversational responses to writers and artists from Marcus Aurelius and William Blake to Milan Kundera and Johnny Depp. On Thursday, Feb. 21, Graber will read from her work for The Writing Program Reading Series.

Scientific efforts to explain feeblemindedness, delinquency and racial inferiorities date to the Spanish Inquisition. And while the horrors of Nazi Germany exposed fatal flaws in science’s quest to build the master race, the ethical dilemmas posed by the science of eugenics are far from behind us, warns an anthropologist from Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University School of Medicine faculty members were honored by the school this week for their dedication, talent and contributions to the institution and the field of medicine. Shown is Anne Carol Goldberg, MD, an associate professor of medicine, who was presented with distinguished clinician honors at the event.