Newsroom Stories

Scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are playing a leading role in an international collaboration dedicated to understanding genes that contribute to inflammatory bowel disease.

St. Louis-area high school student Anjali Fernandes creates a wind turbine during the School of Engineering & Applied Science’s “Explore Engineering” program July 26. The program grew out of a conversation between students who belong to the National Society of Black Engineers and Ralph Quatrano, PhD, dean and the Spencer T. Olin Professor, and seeks to give underrepresented groups exposure to engineering and to the university.

Like explorers mapping a new planet, scientists probing the brain need every type of landmark they can get. Each mountain, river or forest helps scientists find their way through the intricacies of the human brain. Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a new technique that provides rapid access to brain landmarks formerly only available at autopsy.

Rebecca Dresser, JD, the Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law and professor of ethics in medicine at Washington University in St. Louis, has been appointed to the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee of the National Institutes of Health. The committee serves a critical role in the oversight of federally funded research involving recombinant DNA.  

Olin Business School has announced the appointment of Paula Crews as associate dean and director of marketing and communications for the undergraduate and graduate business school at Washington University in St. Louis.

A clinical warning system undergoing a feasibility study at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis will include wireless sensors that take blood oxygenation and heart-rate readings from at-risk patients once or twice a minute. The data  and lab results in the electronic medical record will be continually scrutinized by a machine-learning algorithm looking for signs of clinical deterioration. If any such signs are found, the system will call a nurse on a cellphone, alerting the nurse to check on the patient.

Nearly 390 physicians at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have been named to The Best Doctors In America for 2011.

The recent Budweiser can redesign probably won’t do much to reinvigorate sagging sales of the iconic brew, say marketing professors at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

Estate planning with Fido in mind? Better be careful, says a trusts and estates expert at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. The issue has been in the news recently. British fashion designer Alexander McQueen, who died in February 2010, left a sizeable sum of money to his beloved dogs; Trouble, the recently deceased dog of “The Queen of Mean,” Leona Helmsley, famously inherited $12 million. Beyond celebrities, a powerful pet inheritance constituency thrives. Between 12 percent and 27 percent of owners have provisions for their pets in their wills. But what happens to the inheritance when the pet passes?

A traveling exhibition from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum called “Deadly Medicine: Creating the Master Race,” highlights how physicians, geneticists, anthropologists and others in the healing professions developed and participated in the Holocaust. The exhibit opens Monday, Aug. 8, at the Bernard Becker Medical Library at Washington University School of Medicine and will be on display until Sunday, Oct. 30.