Notables

Vetta Sanders Thompson, the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Racial and Ethnic Diversity at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, will serve as the keynote speaker at the Building Vibrant Partnerships: Community and University Engagement Summit on Friday, March 1.

Washington University in St. Louis has been awarded a $20,000 “mini-grant” by the Association of American Universities to further existing efforts to improve undergraduate education in STEM disciplines. The funding will support programming organized by the Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning and Education (CIRCLE).

The American Academy of Microbiology has named three Washington University in St. Louis faculty members as fellows: Gautam Dantas, of the School of Medicine, and Robert Kranz and Petra Levin, professors of biology in Arts & Sciences.

NASA’s Astrobiology Program has awarded $9 million to a multi-institution team for the Earth First Origins project, led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Jeffrey G. Catalano of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis is a co-investigator.

Two Arts & Sciences faculty members, Leigh Eric Schmidt and Thomas Keeline, have been awarded prestigious research fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Washington University in St. Louis has been awarded a Level 1 accreditation by the ArbNet Arboretum Accreditation Program and the Morton Arboretum for achieving standards of professional practices deemed important for arboreta and botanic gardens.

Geoff Ward, associate professor and associate chair of African and African-American studies in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded the 2018-19 W.E.B. Du Bois Award by the Western Society of Criminology.

Samuel Achilefu, the Michel M. Ter-Pogossian Professor of Radiology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, is the 2019 recipient of the SPIE Britton Chance Award in Biomedical Optics. The annual award recognizes outstanding lifetime achievements in the field of biomedical optics.

Tim Portlock, associate professor in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a 2019 Artists Fellowship from the Regional Arts Commission. Two alumni, Margaret Keller (MFA ‘89) and William Morris (BFA ‘85), are also among the honorees.

“Eyes on the Prize,” which was created and produced by Washington University in St. Louis alumnus Henry Hampton, is the recipient of the 2019 Cinema Eye Legacy Award. University Libraries has preserved and made available original interviews for the documentary on the civil rights movement.