Notables

Scientists often use things in nature as a model to make new things, such as using birds as models for airplanes. One WUSTL engineer is using a basic cell as a model to make genetically engineered bacteria that would produce biofuel or pharmaceuticals. Tae Seok Moon, PhD, has received a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation for his project, “Engineering Biological Robustness through Synthetic Control.”

Alex Tinianow will receive this year’s Harrison D. Stalker Award from the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. The award is given annually to a graduating biology major whose undergraduate career combines outstanding scientific scholarship with significant contributions in the arts and humanities.

George A. Macones, MD, the Mitchell and Elaine Yanow Professor and head of Obstetrics and Gynecology, and Jeffrey F. Peipert, MD, the Robert J. Terry Professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology, have been named deputy editors of the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology.

Chris Carpenter, MD, associate professor of emergency medicine, co-chaired the national Geriatric Emergency Department Guidelines Task Force, which created new recommendations intended to improve the care for older adults in emergency departments.

​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 the 2014 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO)–American Cancer Society Award.​

Tia Drake, executive director of Graduate Medical Education (GME) at the School of Medicine, has been honored with the GME Institutional Coordinator Excellence Award.

​John DiPersio, MD, PhD, chief of the Division of Oncology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, and Robert Schreiber, PhD, director of the school’s Center for Human Immunology and Immunotherapy Programs, will be honored in April by the American Association for Cancer Research.

Regina (Gina) F. Frey, PhD, the Florence Moog Professor of STEM Education, has been honored with with an Excellence in Teaching Award from Emerson Electric Co.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced Feb. 17 that Washington University in St. Louis’ Gary Patti has been awarded a 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship. He is among 126 outstanding U.S. and Canadian researchers selected as fellowship recipients this year. Awarded annually since 1955, the fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars, the next generation of scientific leaders.

A WUSTL team learned last month that they had won the Gold Medal for their analysis of a problem during the international University Physics Competition, held in November. Using the principles of physics, they predicted characteristics of an animal on an extraterrestrial planet.