Arts & Sciences

At the Washington University in St. Louis Board of Trustees meeting May 1, several faculty members were appointed with tenure or promoted with tenure, effective July 1 unless otherwise indicated.

World-renowned author William H. Gass, the David May Distinguished University Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at Washington University in St. Louis, recently was awarded the William Dean Howells Medal for his novel “Middle C.”

New Horizons will fly through the Pluto system on July 14 at an angle of 46 degrees to the plane of the dwarf planet’s orbit, then turn to use sunlight reflected from Charon, Pluto’s biggest moon, to image areas of Pluto now in continuous darkness. Your host for the WashU Pluto watching party will be Bill McKinnon, a planetary scientist at Washington University in St. Louis, who will be commenting from mission headquarters at the Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland.

In 1999, Danish scientist Per Bak made the startling proposal that the brain remained stable for much the same reason a sand pile does; many small avalanches hold it at a balance point, where — in the brain’s case — information processing is optimized. Now scientists have shown for the first time that a brain receiving and processing sensory input follows these dynamics.

Four students in Arts & Sciences, one of whom also earned a degree from Olin Business School, have received the U.S. State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship for summer 2015.

Marie Cendrine Taris, assistant to the chair of the Department of Mathematics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, died after a sudden illness Tuesday, June 2, at St. Mary’s Health Center. She was 46.

Denise Elif Gill, PhD, assistant professor of ethnomusicology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, was named a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Gill will finish her book titled “Melancholic Modalities: Affect and Contemporary Turkish Classical Musicians.”

The honors are piling up for students in the Department of Classics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.

Nine Washington University in St. Louis alumni have been selected to conduct research or teach English this year as participants in the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. The program recognizes talented students who are committed to promoting global collaboration and understanding through research and teaching.

Scientists have been itching to go to Europa for a long time because this moon is thought to have a global ocean beneath an outer shell of ice — an ocean that may be hospitable to life. In May, NASA took the first step, selecting nine instruments to fly on a mission to Europa. Washington University’s William McKinnon, on the science team for two of the instruments, talks about the mission.