Business research not necessarily academic

Two professors at the Olin Business School are the winners of the first annual “Olin Award: Recognizing Research that Transforms Business.” Jackson Nickerson, Ph.D. and Todd Zenger, Ph.D. will share the $10,000 honorarium in recognition of their research that examined the negative impact that social comparison, or envy, causes in the workplace.

Macias named provost, will step down as dean

Executive Vice Chancellor Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., dean of Arts & Sciences and the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, has been named provost, effective Jan. 1, 2009, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced. Macias will relinquish his duties as dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences on June 30, 2008, and will take on expanded leadership responsibilities as provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs following a six-month sabbatical.

Campus celebrates 1000th anniversary of ‘world’s first novel,’ April 18

One mark of a great novel, it’s been said, is its ability to stand the “test of time” — to remain captivating to readers from generation to generation. Washington University will honor such a novel on April 18 with two campus events celebrating the 1,000th anniversary of the Tale of Genji, a central pillar of the Japanese literary canon often hailed as the world’s first novel.

Macias named provost, will step down as dean

MaciasExecutive Vice Chancellor Edward S. Macias, Ph.D., dean of Arts & Sciences and the Barbara and David Thomas Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, has been named provost, effective Jan. 1, 2009, Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton announced.

Reiss named Fox professor

ReissCraig Reiss has been named the Sam and Marilyn Fox Distinguished Professor in Medicine at the School of Medicine. Reiss, a cardiologist, directs the Washington University Cardiology Consultants and the Heart Care Institute at Barnes-Jewish West County Hospital.

Drug prevents abnormalities that lead to seizures, mouse study shows

Current medications for seizures are comparable to over-the-counter cold and flu remedies: They block symptoms, but don’t significantly affect the underlying illnesses that cause them. Now scientists at the School of Medicine have taken the first step toward developing another option. They’ve used a drug to prevent the brain abnormalities that lead to seizures in mice with an inherited form of epilepsy.

Meet your match

Photo by Robert BostonGraduating medical students learn where they will do their residencies at Match Day March 20 in Moore Auditorium.

The Barbizon School and the Nature of Landscape at Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum May 2 to July 21

Jules Dupré, *The River* (c.1850)Between 1830 and 1880 a loosely associated group of landscape painters lived and worked in the small farming village of Barbizon, France. Rejecting the traditional artistic conventions of academic landscape painting, such as the Ideal, the Pastoral, and the Heroic, they strived instead to depict an unmediated version of nature — an approach that would prove central to later avant-garde movements such as Impressionism. In May the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will present *The Barbizon School and the Nature of Landscape,* an exhibition of close to 40 works by leading Barbizon figures and by later French and American artists who were influenced by the school.