Research Wire

A team led by scientists and engineers, including researchers from the McKelvey School of Engineering, has created a unique, record-setting material that can bend one infrared ray of light in two directions.

Jason Yi and Harrison Gabel, both at the School of Medicine, each have received two-year, $300,000 pilot grants from the Simons Foundation Autism Research Initiative. The researchers will use the funds to investigate genetic diseases that result in autism.

Ying (Maggie) Chen, MD, PhD, at the School of Medicine, has received a match grant of $30,000 from the Center for Drug Discovery at Washington University. The grant will help fund proof of concept and related research directed toward targeting a novel receptor to treat uromodulin-associated chronic kidney disease.

Matt Gabel, a professor of political science in Arts & Sciences, received a two-year $325,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study ways to protect minority voting rights and representation.

Natalie M. Niemi, an assistant professor at the School of Medicine, received a five-year $1.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research on mitchondrial function.

Alex Chen and Yajie Yuan, both assistant professors of physics in Arts & Sciences, have received a $447,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to create a unified model of pulsars, rapidly rotating neutron stars that release mysterious pulses of electromagnetic radiation.

Researchers led by Fuzhong Zhang at the McKelvey School of Engineering developed a synthetic biology tool to comprehensively reveal gene regulatory networks in E. coli.

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.