Notables

Damena Agonafer, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science, received the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Electronics and Photonics Packaging Division 2019 Early Career Award.

Patricia Weisensee, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the McKelvey School of Engineering, plans to develop a liquid-metal-based heat switch for use in space with a three-year, $600,000 early-career award from NASA.

Arpita Bose, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, was awarded a second “Changing the Face of STEM” mentoring grant from L’Oreal USA to continue a summer laboratory research program for low-income high school students in St. Louis.

A new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine contains overarching goals and associated recommendations that health-care systems, government agencies and others should implement to better integrate patients’ social needs into health-care delivery. The Brown School’s Sean Joe was on the committee that developed the report.

David H. Gutmann, MD, PhD, the Donald O. Schnuck Family Professor and vice chair for research affairs in the Department of Neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received the Abhijit Guha Award from the Society for Neuro-Oncology and the Section on Tumors of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons.

David Holtzman, MD, the Andrew B. and Gretchen P. Jones Professor at Washington University School of Medicine, has received the August M. Watanabe Prize in Translational Research from the Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute. He was recognized for his work uncovering the causes of Alzheimer’s disease and translating an understanding of its basic biology into potential therapies.

Physician-scientist and rheumatologist John P. Atkinson, MD, the Samuel B. Grant Professor of Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been awarded the Presidential Gold Medal by the American College of Rheumatology.

David Gutmann, MD, PhD, the Donald O. Schnuck Family Professor of Neurology at the School of Medicine, has received a second Einstein Visiting Fellowship from the Berlin Institute of Health to study how immune cells in the brain known as microglia are linked to cancer, vision loss and behavioral problems in the disease neurofibromatosis type 1.

Joseph Jez, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and chair of biology in Arts & Sciences, along with two former researchers in his laboratory, P.A. Rea and R.E. Cahoon, was awarded a U.S. patent for engineered plants that could help detoxify, or remediate, soils contaminated with heavy metals.

Obesity expert Jonathan R. Brestoff, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a 2019 Career Award for Medical Scientists from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to biomedical science through research and education.