First university-wide food drive begins April 13

This year, for the first time, all Washington University campuses will join forces for the PB&Joy Food Drive. The food roundup, which begins Wednesday, April 13, and runs through Sunday, April 24, aims to feed area children — enough to fill Busch Stadium three times — who are at risk of hunger this summer when there’s no school or free lunch and breakfast.

Engineering the dance

Students dance on a new LED dance floor at the dance party Vertigo April 2. The floor was built by WUSTL engineering students and has over 1,000,000,000 colors and 32,000 lumens of LED lights. The wireless computer-controlled modular dance floor includes interactive animations based on music synchronization and pressure sensors.

Notables

Daniel Ferraro, MD, PhD, a postdoctoral research associate and resident physician in the Department of Radiation Oncology, received a $2,500 grant from the American Medical Association Foundation’s Seed Grant Research Program for research titled “Targeting Radiation Inducible Antigens on Tumors with Peptides.” … Jeffrey Gordon, MD, the Robert L. Glaser Professor of Pathology and Immunology, […]

Cosima von Bonin: Character Appropriation at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum

Based in Cologne, Germany, conceptual artist Cosima von Bonin is among the most influential yet elusive artists of her generation. At once playful, seductive and satirical, her wide-ranging creative practice interweaves sculpture, installation, video, textiles, performance and electronic music with a diverse network of collaborators. Beginning Friday, May 6, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present Cosima von Bonin: Character Appropriation, the artist’s first solo museum exhibition in the American Midwest.

Ready for launch

Students, faculty and staff hosted aspiring scientists March 26, April 2 and April 9 during “Catalysts for Change” workshops aimed at introducing female high school students to science, technology and engineering fields. Workshop students launch containers — designed using straws, cotton balls, rubber bands and tape — outside of the Lab Sciences Building. They competed to see who could launch their container the farthest without breaking an egg protected inside.

Peck to address health care in America April 11

William A. Peck, MD, the Alan A. and Edith L. Wolff Distinguished Professor of Medicine, director of the Center for Health Policy and former dean of the School of Medicine, will present “Health Care in America: Transforming the Citadel,” for the Weidenbaum Center Forum at 7:30 p.m. Monday, April 11, in Whitaker Hall, Room 100.

We’re not broke, we’re starving, says Brown School economist

A government shutdown is looming and many politicians who are claiming “we’re broke” are proposing short-term or long-term federal budget plans with steep budget cuts as the only option to reduce the deficit. “But it looks like budget deficits are being driven in part by a deliberate strategy to sustain them, so policymakers are forced to cut spending,” says Timothy McBride, PhD, economist and associate dean for public health at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. “The evidence certainly supports the theory that the Republicans are using a strategy of ‘starving the beast,’” he says.

Meeting a cosmologist

High school student Isabella Kanak (left) shares a few laughs about the dark side of the universe with Edward W. “Rocky” Kolb, PhD, a cosmologist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and a professor at the University of Chicago. Kanak and other members of the Junior Academy of Science had an opportunity to visit with Kolb March 31 in Whitaker Hall after he delivered the 2011 McDonnell Distinguished Lecture about the mysteries of dark matter and dark energy.
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