Arts & Sciences

Songwriter Sean Douglas’ job is just like yours — except his office is the recording studio. And his co-workers are stars like Jason Derulo and David Guetta.

Want to learn better? Read these six tips to find out how.

Scientists were able to deploy ruggidized seismometers that could withstand intense cold in Antarctica only recently. A line of seismometers strung across the West Antarctic Rift Valley and the Marie Byrd Land have given geologists their first good look at the mantle beneath the ice and rocks, revealing areas of hot rock that might affect the behavior of the overlying ice sheet.

Sophia Hayes, PhD, professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won the American Chemical Society St. Louis Section’s 2015 Saint Louis Award.

What do you do if you are trying to save a very rare and shy animal? How do you even find them? Anthropologist Joseph Orkin, PhD ’14, called in Pinkerton. No, not the detective agency, the dog.

Henric Krawczynski, PhD, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has won a $1.3 million NASA grant to develop semiconductor detectors and their readout electrons for the next generation of  X-ray telescopes.

Denise Ward-Brown, associate professor in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, and poet Travis Mossotti, a grant analyst in the university’s Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, are among 10 recipients of the Regional Arts Commission’s 2015 Artist Fellowships.

Michio Ito is the forgotten pioneer of American modern dance. Yet Ito’s influence will be on full display Dec. 4-6 when “Pavane,” a tribute choreographed by his niece, Taeko Ito, is featured in Washington University Dance Theatre.

Douglass C. North, PhD, co-recipient of the 1993 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences and the Spencer T. Olin Professor Emeritus in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, died Monday, Nov. 23, 2015, at his summer home in Benzonia, Mich. He was 95.

Three faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis are among 347 new fellows named by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the world’s largest general scientific society. David W. Piston, PhD; Shelly E. Sakiyama-Elbert, PhD; and Jeffrey M. Zacks, PhD, will receive the highest honor awarded by AAAS in recognition of their distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications.