Notables

Two psychology researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have received a $620,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the project “Preschoolers’ Use of Statistical Learning to Discover Spelling and Reading Conventions Prior to Formal Schooling.”

Mike Hayes, executive director of Campus Life and director of Greek Life at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named to the North-American Interfraternity Conference (NIC) Presidential Commission on Hazing Awareness and Prevention.

Bo-Ruei Chen, PhD, postdoctoral research scholar in the (Barry) Sleckman Lab, has received a three-year, $167,346 fellowship from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research titled “Pathways that Preserve Genome Stability during Antigen Receptor Gene Assembly.” …

Douglas Chalker, PhD, associate professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, has been awarded $170,000 from the National Science Foundation to continue work on his project, “DNA Elimination Mechanisms in Tetrahymena.”

Lihong Wang, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a prestigious BRAIN Initiative Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Wang’s three-year, $2.7 million award, is one of 58 grants totaling $46 million announced Sept. 30 by Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, director of the NIH, in Washington, D.C.

Kunal Agrawal, PhD, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, received a four-year, $330,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for her work titled “XPS: FULL: FP: Collaborative Research: Taming Parallelism: Optimally Exploiting High-throughput Parallel Architectures.”

Christopher Stark, assistant professor of music in Arts & Sciences, has been awarded a commission from Chamber Music America, the national network of chamber music professionals, to compose a piece for the New York-based duo New Morse Code.

Over the course of about 24 hours Sept. 22-23, four student athletes from Washington University in St. Louis were tabbed by national coaches’ organizations as “Athlete of the Week.” It’s an unprecedented honor in school history, one in which Athletics Director Josh Whitman calls “inspirational.” To put it into perspective, the university received only six such honors throughout the entire academic sports year in 2013-14.

Graham Colditz, MD, DrPH, a disease-prevention expert at Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, will receive a national award for his contributions to cancer prevention research.

The St. Louis Rams have selected Virginia Braxs, senior lecturer in Romance languages and literatures in Arts & Sciences, as a recipient of the NFL Hispanic Heritage Leadership Award.