Notables

The Brown School’s Jason Purnell will lead a response team of over 40 St. Louis area nonprofits, social service agencies and governments to deal with the coronavirus pandemic. The COVID-19 Regional Response team aims to help people navigate resources and get help with needs including employment, food, housing, child care and legal aid.

Shyam Kiran Akula, a 2016 Washington University in St. Louis alum, has been named a 2020 Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow, a prestigious academic honor for outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants who are pursuing a graduate education in the United States.

Jianjun Guan, professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the McKelvey School of Engineering, has been inducted into the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering College of Fellows.

Lerone A. Martin, associate professor of religion and politics and incoming director of the American Culture Studies program in  Arts & Sciences, received a $250,000 grant from The Teagle Foundation to develop and implement a summer humanities program for promising, underserved high school students from the St. Louis region.

Elizabeth M. Brunt, MD, professor emerita of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a Lifetime Achievement Award for Contributions to Liver Pathology from the Hans Popper Hepatopathology Society.

Portland, Ore.-based artist Lyndon Barrois Jr., and artist Wyndi DeSouza, who divides her time between St. Louis and Newark, N.J., have won the 2020 Stone & DeGuire Contemporary Art Awards.

Samuel Achilefu, the Michel M. Ter-Pogossian Professor of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been selected to serve on the National Advisory Council for Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Rabbi Hershey Novack of Chabad at Washington University in St. Louis was recently certified as a Holocaust educator by Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center in Jerusalem. 

Sean Whelan, the Marvin A. Brennecke Distinguished Professor and head of the Department of Molecular Microbiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named the LGBTQ+ Scientist of the Year by the National Organization of Gay and Lesbian Scientists and Technical Professionals for his work on emerging infectious diseases.

Xuan “Silvia” Zhang, assistant professor of electrical and systems engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, will use a five-year $500,000 award to make information processing more efficient.