Newsroom Stories

Bradley P. Stoner, MD, PhD, has been elected president of the American Sexually Transmitted Diseases Association, the national society that represents researchers and clinicians specializing in sexually transmitted infections.

Math and music might seem a strange combination to some. Certainly many famous performers are able to bring audiences to their feet without once thinking about ratios or anything else overtly mathematical. But David Wright, chairman of the mathematics department at Washington University in St. Louis, always has been gifted with an unusual, even eerie, ability to hear both the music and the math simultaneously.

Workers prepare to place a new MRI scanner into the East Building at the School of Medicine June 11. The 18,000-pound scanner will be used for the Human Connectome Project, a research study that will trace the anatomical and functional connections between different regions of the brain’s gray matter.

Racial discrimination could lessen the mental-health benefits usually associated with better socio-economic position for African-American men, finds a new study by Darrell L. Hudson, PhD, assistant professor of public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Sixteen St. Louis youth will be in Forest Park on June 13 tracking box turtles, fitted with telemetry devices — all to help with a project aimed at studying box turtle movements and their health. The 12- and 13-year-olds are participating in a pilot study designed by scientists from the Saint Louis Zoo and Washington University in St. Louis to document box turtle movements and their health status in urban and rural areas in and around St. Louis.

Some 200 U.S. scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and elsewhere detail findings from the most comprehensive census of the microbial make-up of healthy humans.

Researchers have identified the primary player of the biochemical bugle call that musters the body’s defenders against viral infection. Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have shown that a key molecule, MDA5, is essential for producing enough interferon (the bugle call) to rally virus-fighting cells during certain viral infections.

The American Academy of Microbiology has named two Washington University in St. Louis faculty members as fellows: Robert Blankenship, PhD, and John Heuser, MD.

The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS) honored Barbara Schaal, PhD, the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor in the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, with the 2011-12 AIBS Distinguished Scientist Award June 1.

From baking birthday cakes to greeting visitors with a smile, Pat Smith, chief administrative assistant for the WUSTL football team, makes it a priority to help all involved with the football program feel special. In recognition of her more than 10 years of dedication, Smith was recognized with the Gloria W. White Distinguished Service Award in a May 21 Staff Day ceremony in Edison Theatre.