Research Wire

Martha Precup, an assistant professor of mathematics and statistics in Arts & Sciences, has won a prestigious National Science Foundation award for a project uncovering patterns in complex data.

Yajie Yuan, an assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, will lead a study of plasmas in neutron star magnetospheres, as part of a new collaboration funded by the Simons Foundation.

The Social Policy Institute at Washington University in St. Louis has received a two-year $475,000 grant from the Lumina Foundation. The funding supports research to understand the impact of short-term credentials on various aspects of individuals’ lives.

Fred Ssewamala, the William E. Gordon Distinguished Professor, and Byron Powell, co-director of the Center for Mental Health Services Research, both at the Brown School, have won a five-year $3.5 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health & Human Development, part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH, for a new study in Uganda.

Jake Rosenfeld, in Arts & Sciences, and Stephen Roll, at the Brown School, received grants from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth to study how inequality affects economic growth and well-being in the United States.

Jaebok Choi, PhD, and Russell Pachynski, MD, both of the School of Medicine, have received Research Scholar Grants from the American Cancer Society to support their research in oncology. Both investigators are research members of Siteman Cancer Center at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and the School of Medicine.

Gaya Amarasinghe, the Alumni Endowed Professor of pathology and immunology at the School of Medicine, received a five-year $16.8 million grant renewal from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for Ebola virus research.

Erik Henriksen, an associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, is part of a team that was awarded funding from the National Science Foundation’s Quantum Sensing Challenges for Transformational Advances in Quantum Systems program.

Lauren Wiseman-Jones, a graduate student of biological anthropology in Arts & Sciences, is studying how wild mountain gorillas respond to social and human-caused stressors. She won a Leakey Foundation grant for the work.

Chenfeng Ke, an incoming associate professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, developed a unique design for tough but stretchable hydrogels, reported Aug. 23 in the journal Chem. The new material is both flexible and durable.