Research Wire

Claire Masteller, in Arts & Sciences, won a $313,872 National Science Foundation grant for collaborative research that will help scientists distinguish between climate-driven change and the natural variability of river channels.

Jonathan Barnes, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, won a $450,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate and expand efficient methods for synthesizing catenane-based polymers and networked materials.

The American Heart Association has recognized the McKelvey School of Engineering’s Jonathan Silva with its Established Investigator Award. The five-year $400,000 award will support his work into precision medicine for patients with irregular heartbeat.

A team led by Song Hu at the McKelvey School of Engineering found a way to measure biomarkers in the body with higher accuracy by combining a Bessel beam with deep learning.

The McKelvey School of Engineering’s Hong Chen and her team are developing tiny sensors to detect blast-induced traumatic brain injury with new funding from the Office of Naval Research.

Michael J. Holtzman, MD, the Selma and Herman Seldin Professor of Medicine and director of the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine at the School of Medicine, received a $2.5 million grant from the Department of Defense for work toward a novel drug to treat lung disease.

A team that received early support from the Living Earth Collaborative was awarded a $633,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to evaluate pollination in orchards across the city of St. Louis. They will examine how factors such as human population density, socioeconomic status, soil type and surrounding vegetation impact insect numbers and fruit yield.

A multi-institutional team led by an engineer at Washington University seeks to refine a method that would remove selenium from wastewater efficiently and cost effectively, thanks to a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Living Earth Collaborative postdoctoral fellow Matthew Austin published new research finding that climate change is affecting how violets reproduce.

Geoscientists Walid Ben Mansour and Douglas A. Wiens in Arts & Sciences received a grant from the National Science Foundation to determine the thermal and compositional structure of Antarctica using seismic, gravity and topography data and petrological modeling.