Notables

The Washington University Danforth Staff Council has added 13 new members and elected its executive officers for the academic year.

Megan Baldridge, MD, PhD, assistant professor of medicine at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been named an Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Diseases by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.

Jiayi Huang, MD, has been named chief of the central nervous system (CNS)/Gamma Knife service, a form of radiation surgery that can eliminate brain tumors, at the School of Medicine.

Three staff members in Medical Public Affairs at Washington University School of Medicine have received writing awards in an annual national competition sponsored by the Group on Institutional Advancement of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

Ronald C. Rubenstein, MD, PhD, a highly regarded physician-scientist with expertise in cystic fibrosis, has been named director of the Division of Allergy and Pulmonary Medicine in the Department of Pediatrics at the School of Medicine. He began his new position Sept. 1.

Rebecca Messbarger, professor of Italian and founding director of the Medical Humanities program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and Lindsay Sheedy, a doctoral candidate in art history and archaeology in Arts & Sciences, have both been named 2021 Rome Prize Fellows by the American Academy in Rome.

Robert W. Gereau IV, the Dr. Seymour and Rose T. Brown Professor and vice chair for research in the Department of Anesthesiology at the School of Medicine, has received the Landis Award for Outstanding Mentorship from the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Hedwig Lee, professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was elected to the prestigious Sociological Research Association. Lee also was appointed to the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s ad hoc committee, “Best Practices for Implementing Decarceration as a Strategy to Mitigate the Spread of COVID-19 in Correctional Facilities.”

In recognition of excellence across multiple fields, rising junior Prathamesh Chati in Arts & Sciences has been named the 2020 Florence Moog Scholar.

The Society for Economic Botany awarded Gayle J. Fritz, professor emerita of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, its 2020 Mary W. Klinger Book Award for “Feeding Cahokia.” The book emphasizes the importance of native crops that were domesticated by America’s first farmers long before corn became a staple food in what is now the U.S. Midwest.