Arts & Sciences

Cities are both a leading cause and victim of global climate change, but they also hold great promise. In the first installment of Class Acts, a series celebrating the Class of 2019, seniors Marissa Lerner and Alexis Vidaurreta share their optimism and respective visions for cities that protect people and resources.

Helium is a valuable, non-renewable resource that is critical for many medical and research applications. But helium supply and pricing are unreliable. Sophia Hayes, a professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences, spoke at a recent American Chemical Society webinar about the need for congressional action to address these challenges.

For its 2019-20 Great Artist Series, Washington University in St. Louis will present four affordably priced concerts by some of today’s finest performers.

Whether tackling gun violence or connecting students to the community, Risa Zwerling Wrighton is dedicated to improving lives, making her the perfect first lady.

From the beginning of his tenure, Mark Wrighton set out to put Washington University and its students and faculty on the map.

Morgan DeBaun, AB ’12, and three other WashU alumni ­founded Blavity, a news and entertainment website featuring stories from a black point of view. Today, DeBaun is CEO, using the varied skills she learned at WashU.

Oguz Alyanak, an anthropology doctoral student in Arts & Sciences, has been selected for a Volkswagen Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities to support his research on the social lives of working-class Muslim men in Germany, France and other European countries.

A book by Tim Bartley, professor of sociology in Arts & Sciences, has won the Harold and Margaret Sprout Award for best book from the International Studies Association’s Environmental Studies Section.

The Performing Arts Department presents the world premiere of “Florida,” a new play by recent alumnus Lucas Marschke, April 11-14 in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre. Workshopped last fall as part of the A. E. Hotchner Playwriting Festival, the play recounts a dysfunctional vacation for the ages.

Researchers in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis have figured out how to feed electricity to microbes to grow truly green, biodegradable plastic, as reported in the Journal of Industrial Microbiology and Biotechnology.