Postdoctoral researchers will showcase their work at the 8th Annual Postdoc Scientific Symposium at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The symposium will be held from 11:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m., March 29, 2012, at the Farrell Learning and Teaching Center Atrium and Connor Auditorium.
Kunal Agrawal, PhD, assistant professor of computer
science & engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied
Science at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a prestigious
Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National
Science Foundation. The goal of Agrawal’s project, titled “Provably Good
Concurrency Platforms for Streaming Applications,” is to design
platforms that will allow programmers to easily write correct and
efficient high-throughput parallel programs.
University College, the adult, evening and continuing education division at Washington University in St. Louis, has developed a new degree, the Doctor of Liberal Arts (DLA), created for the experienced adult learner who wishes to pursue rigorous interdisciplinary study along with independent, scholarly reading and research.
William F. Pickard of Washington Unviersity in St. Louis introduces the February 2012 special issue of the Proceedings of the IEEE by quoting the Bible: “The wind bloweth where it listeth.” That, in so many words, describes is the major technological problem with renewable sources of energy, such as solar and wind power. The special issue, which Pickard co-edited with Derek Abbott of the University of Adelaide, discusses several solutions to intermittency, as it is called, first among them massive energy storage.
Batten disease is a rare but fatal neurological disorder that typically strikes young children. Working in mice with the infantile form of the disease, scientists have discovered dramatic improvements in life span and motor function by treating the animals with gene therapy and bone marrow transplantation.
Smoking, the leading preventable cause of mortality in the United States, continues to disproportionately impact lower income members of racial and ethnic minority groups. In a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health, Jason Q. Purnell, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis, looked at how perceived discrimination influences smoking rates among these groups. “We found that regardless of race or ethnicity, the odds of current smoking were higher among individuals who perceived that they were treated differently because of their race, though racial and ethnic minority groups were more likely to report discrimination,” he says.
Demand for specialized master’s programs at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis has been growing exponentially during recent years, mirroring an international trend toward specialization in business education.
Participating in an online March Madness bracket or fantasy sport league is harmless fun for most people, but for someone with a gambling addiction, it can be a dangerous temptation. “Now, with states entertaining the possibility of increasing revenue through legalizing internet gambling, it is even more important to pay attention to groups that may be vulnerable to problem gambling, particularly youth,” says Renee Cunningham-Williams, PhD, gambling addictions expert and associate professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis.
The 4th annual Take Steps for Kids 5K and 1 Mile will take place Saturday, March 24, on the Danforth Campus. Presented by the Washington University Club Running team, the event raises proceeds for the Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri youth mentoring organization.
Narayana Kocherlakota, PhD, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, will present “On the Limits to Monetary Policy” for the second-annual Hyman P. Minksy Lecture at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 20 in the Bryan Cave Moot Courtroom in Anheuser-Busch Hall.
