Research Wire

Cells migrate to different tissues for a variety of reasons, including organ development, tissue repair and the spread of cancer. Researchers led by Amit Pathak at the McKelvey School of Engineering have found unexpected activity in the nucleus of healthy cells that provides new insight into cell mechanics.

Outcomes of a two-year STEM learning pilot program that the Institute for School Partnership at Washington University in St. Louis completed in partnership with St. Louis Public Schools and The Little Bit Foundation are encouraging. 

Chien-Ju Ho, Yevgeniy Vorobeychik and William Yeoh, all from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering, have received research awards from J.P. Morgan Chase to support their work in artificial intelligence.

A team of researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering has developed an energy-efficient way to consolidate long-term memories on a tiny chip. Shantanu Chakrabartty and members of his lab developed a device that mimics the dynamics of the brain’s synapses.

With a three-year $630,000 grant from the Office of Naval Research, researchers in the laboratory of Vijay Ramani at the McKelvey School of Engineering will develop, scale and test highly efficient unitized regenerative fuel cells to be used by the U.S. Navy.

Brian Lananna, a postdoctoral research scholar in developmental biology at the School of Medicine, has received a three-year $215,478 postdoctoral fellowship award from the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will help Meredith Jackrel, an assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, and her team study Matrin-3, a poorly understood protein linked to several neurodegenerative disorders.

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.