Notables

Sculptor and longtime faculty member Ronald Leax, the Halsey C. Ives Professor Emeritus of Art, will receive the Dean’s Medal for outstanding service April 4 as part of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ annual Awards for Distinction dinner.

Jason Yi, assistant professor of neuroscience at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a prestigious 2019 Sloan Research Fellowship, which supports promising early-career scientists.

Yevgeniy Vorobeychik, at the McKelvey School of Engineering, is part of a team that received a $6.25 million five-year grant under the U.S. Department of Defense’s highly competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative Program (MURI) Award. The team will work to develop tools to understand and shape both online and on-the-ground networks that drive human decision-making.

Matthew Lew, at the McKelvey School of Engineering, is part of a team that received a $7.5 million five-year award under the U.S. Department of Defense’s highly competitive Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative Program (MURI). The team’s research is aimed at developing a new class of functional living electronics based on living materials such as proteins and bacteria.

Elijah Thimsen, at the McKelvey School of Engineering, is part of a team that received a $6.4 million five-year grant for research investigating how to use dusty plasma, or plasma in which particles are suspended, to make new materials.

Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., associate professor of women, gender and sexuality studies and of African and African-American studies, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will be inducted into the Martin Luther King Jr. Collegium of Scholars during a ceremony April 4 at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

Kimberly Norwood, the Henry H. Oberschelp Professor of Law at Washington University, has been named the 2019 “Woman of the Year” by Missouri Lawyers Media.

Elijah Thimsen will study how chemical reactions occurring in low-temperature plasma move toward a superlocal equilibrium state with a five-year, $500,000 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.

Mary E. Klingensmith, MD, and Gerald L. Andriole, MD, surgeons at Washington University School of Medicine, have been elected to the American College of Surgeons Academy of Master Surgeon Educators. Launched in 2017, the academy recognizes surgeon educators poised to advance the science and practice of surgical education and training.

Mary B. Campbell, associate vice chancellor for real estate at Washington University in St. Louis, received the 4th annual Woman of Influence Award from the St. Louis chapter of Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) during its 14th annual Networking Awards.