Research Wire

Mark McDaniel, a professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, won a $60,164 grant from the National Science Foundation for a project aimed at giving students effective learning strategies for STEM courses.

Patricia Weisensee, an assistant professor at the McKelvey School of Engineering, won a $351,971 National Science Foundation grant to support a new study of condensation in fluid refrigerants.

Anuradhika Puri, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Chemistry in Arts & Sciences, won the Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis Association’s Milton Safenowitz Postdoctoral Fellowship.

A team of researchers, led by Rohit Pappu at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, focused on defining the features of condensate boundaries. They found that within condensates — molecular communities that make up the building blocks of life — the molecules’ organization resembles the hub-and-spoke structure of airports.

Mathematician Soumendra Lahiri, in Arts & Sciences, received two grants from the National Science Foundation for collaborative research projects.

Two Washington University in St. Louis anthropology researchers recently won grants from the Leakey Foundation.

Four years after Washington University researchers detected a possible link between risk for Alzheimer’s disease and the appearance of the eye’s retina, a $10.3 million grant from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is expanding the effort to understand that connection.

Jessica Wagenseil, at the McKelvey School of Engineering, plans to take a closer look at the mechanics on smooth muscle cells in the aortic wall with a four-year $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Results may help to identify new drug strategies.

Jake Funkhouser, a ngraduate student in the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences, received a $2,000 research grant from the Animal Behavior Society.

Ilaria Patania, a postdoctoral research associate in the Department of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences, received a $25,000 research grant from The Leakey Foundation.