WashU Experts

As schools and entertainment venues close due to the coronavirus outbreak, many of us are seeing our social circles reduced quite significantly. An expert on social support at Washington University in St. Louis offers a few evidence-based suggestions for thriving during household isolation.

Rebecca Messbarger, professor of Italian and founding director of the Medical Humanities program in Arts & Sciences, speaks on social distancing from medieval Florence to Progressive Era St. Louis.

The built environment often shapes the spread of disease. Many early cases of COVID-19, the 2019 novel coronavirus, centered on a seafood market in Wuhan City, China. Airports, hospitals and other gathering points can easily become sites of virus transmission. But as the world grapples with the COVID-19 outbreak, Hongxi Yin, associate professor in advanced building systems and architectural design at Washington University in St. Louis, is exploring whether using portable furnaces to sterilize contaminated building exhaust might help to stem the contagion.

Olin Business School faculty at Washington University in St. Louis offer perspectives on the economic, financial and everyday business reactions to the novel coronavirus outbreak.

Marie Griffith, director of the John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St. Louis, argues that it is time to put away uncompromising and extreme rhetoric and truly listen to one another to find solutions that honor both the sanctity of life and a woman’s right to choose. 

In this video, Washington University in St. Louis’ Michael Vahey discusses what it takes for a virus such as the coronavirus to reach pandemic status.

David Cunningham, chair of sociology at Washington University in St. Louis and a nationally recognized expert on white supremacist groups, says that under the Trump administration, white supremacists feel a new license to act. The latest data from the Southern Poverty Law Center show a sharp increase in hate incidents since 2016.

Panos Kouvelis, who teaches and helped to popularize the Waffle House Index regarding natural-disaster responses, says the outbreak’s impact on global supply chains promises to be two times worse than when the SARS virus emerged in 2002 in China.

To the 80,000 parents — um, make that students — who will compete in the upcoming St. Louis Science Fair, Washington University in St. Louis senior Sam Martorana offers this advice: Follow your passion, not the rubric. 

Joe Scherrer, director of the Cybersecurity Strategic Initiative at Washington University and a former cybersecurity innovator with the U.S. Air Force, says the cyberattack on Jeff Bezos is nothing unusual, and these kinds of attacks are becoming more common. But there are things you can do to stay safe.