Research Wire

Marcus Foston and his co-investigator, Ulugbek Kamilov, both faculty members at the McKelvey School of Engineering, received a $577,780 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to study ways to “upcycle” plastic waste.

Rachel Penczykowski, an assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, won a prestigious National Science Foundation grant for early-career faculty who excel at mentorship and research. The award will fund a project investigating infestations of a common plant pathogen in the St. Louis area.

Marcus Foston, an associate professor at the McKelvey School of Engineering, is one of 20 awardees selected by the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a U.S. Department of Energy facility, for this year’s exploratory call.

Jonathan D. Cooper,  a professor at the School of Medicine, received two grants totaling nearly $2.6 million over five years from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to study gene therapy as a possible treatment for CLN1, a rare genetic disease that is fatal in children. 

Christine O’Brien, at the McKelvey School of Engineering, and her team have received a $20,000 prize from the National Institutes of Health (NIH)’s Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics Technology for Maternal Health Challenge.

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.