Research Wire

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.

The School of Medicine has received $50,000 from Healthy Blue Missouri to support The SPOT (Supporting Positive Opportunities with Teens) at Jennings Senior High School.

Peng Bai, Aravind Nagulu and Ning Zhang, all assistant professors at the McKelvey School of Engineering, have been awarded $25,000 Collaboration Initiation Grants from the school.

Alex Meshik, research professor of physics and a faculty fellow in the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences in Arts & Sciences, won a $690,521 NASA grant.

Researchers working with Jonathan Barnes, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, published new research showing how molecules with interlocking ring architectures can be functionalized and incorporated into three-dimensional polymer networks and materials.