Azad Bonni, MD, PhD, currently professor of
neurobiology at Harvard Medical School, will be the next head of the
Department of Anatomy and Neurobiology at Washington University School
of Medicine in St. Louis.
President Barack Obama recently announced the establishment of an Atrocities Prevention Board as part of his comprehensive strategy to prevent genocide and mass atrocities. “For the first time, the National Intelligence Council will prepare an estimate on the global risk of mass atrocities and genocide,” says Leila Nadya Sadat, JD, international law expert and director of the Whitney R. Harris World Law Institute at Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. “By sensitizing the diplomatic and intelligence communities to atrocities risk and systematizing responses to potential crises, the policies of the Atrocities Prevention Board could significantly change in U.S. foreign policy,” she says.
More than a dozen architecture students from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts tested a series of experimental handmade kites along the windy slopes of Art Hill in Forest Park April 26. The kites were designed and built as part of an undergraduate studio on architectural representation led by Sung Ho Kim, associate professor of architecture.
The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates is the 2012-13 selection for the First Year Reading Program. The book focuses on two men with the same name who grew up in similar Baltimore neighborhoods, but ended up on much different paths. One is a convicted murderer serving a life sentence; the other is a decorated veteran and Rhodes Scholar. The book provides a shared intellectual experience for incoming students.
Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have developed a genetic test that can accurately predict whether the most common form of eye cancer will spread to other parts of the body, particularly the liver. The test successfully classified tumors more than 97 percent of the time.
The Knight Center courtyard was the venue for the wedding of Kelly Ayers and Eric Patterson April 27. The couple, whose 8-year-old daughter was diagnosed at birth with a rare genetic disorder, wasgiven a “gifted wedding,” for which 35 local vendors — including Olin Business School’s Knight Center — donated time, talents and products.
Akhila Narla will be among WUSTL’s inaugural class of environmental biology graduates when she received her degree May. 18. Narla, one of the Record’s Outstanding Graduates from the College of Arts & Sciences, plans to seek her medical degree but first will spend two years on a Navajo reservation teaching high school students science and health through the Teach for America program.
WUSTL diners can toss a used napkin and food scraps into a campus compost bin, and 4-6 months later, their trash might be feeding the tulips in front of Brookings Hall. With the help of the WUSTL community, WUSTL Dining Services and the Office of Sustainability are working to turn more food scraps and trash into fertilizer through composting.
Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis will lead an international team of scientists to find new ways to diagnose, treat and prevent a critical global health problem: malnutrition in infants and children. The work is funded by an $8.3 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
Compared with youth with other disabilities, young adults with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) face a disproportionately difficult time navigating work and educational opportunities after high school, finds a new study by Paul Shattuck, PhD, assistant professor at the Brown School at Washington University in St. Louis. “Thirty-five percent of the youth with ASDs had no engagement with employment or education in the first six years after high school,” Shattuck says. “Rates of involvement in all employment and education were lower for those with lower income.”