Arts & Sciences

The discovery of anomalously high levels of mercury in rocks from the Ordivician geological period has led to a new interpretation of the ensuing mass extinction. A sequence of disturbances may have led to catastrophic cooling by reflective sulfate aerosols injected into the atmosphere by massive volcanism. The finding is important since aerosol cooling is under consideration as a way to temper global warming.

Joshua Jackson has been installed as the Saul and Louise Rosenzweig Associate Professor of Personality Science at Washington University in St. Louis. A ceremony and reception were held March 21 in Holmes Lounge in Ridgley Hall to celebrate the occasion.

Rohan Khazanchi, a senior majoring in biology in Arts & Sciences, will receive the 2017 Harrison D. Stalker Award. The award is given annually to a graduating biology major whose undergraduate career combines outstanding scientific scholarship with significant contributions in the arts and humanities.

No matter how smart, well-prepared or hard-working, many college students struggle with rigorous introductory science courses because their approach to learning fails to provide a working knowledge of abstract concepts that underlie examples presented in the classroom, suggests new research from Washington University in St. Louis.

Washington University in St. Louis researchers Jose A. Moron-Concepcion and Thomas Rodebaugh are among 40 scholars selected to receive 2017 Independent Investigator grants from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, one of the top nongovernmental funders of mental health research grants.

Washington University in St. Louis brain scholars will join teams from four other universities in a five-year, $7.5 million research project that aims to build and test the most comprehensive model yet of how people understand and remember events.

The Gephardt Institute has named its Class of 2019 group of Civic Scholars. Sixteen sophomores, in Arts & Sciences and the Sam Fox School, have been chosen for the program’s latest cohort.

John Webb, a senior majoring in biology, with a concentration in neuroscience, and in Japanese language and culture, all in Arts & Sciences, has been awarded the Ralph S. Quatrano Prize.

Three students arrived at Washington University in the fall of 2013 with a desire to do something to help the environment. This month, sustainability champions Nick Annin, Elise Fabbro and Nicola Salzman graduate and are poised to fight the globe’s most pressing problem with a powerful tool: the free market.

Lerone Martin, assistant professor of religion and politics, has been named one of just 10 2017 Nancy Weiss Malkiel Scholars by the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation.