Arts & Sciences

Barbara A. Schaal, PhD, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences and the Mary-Dell Chilton Distinguished Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, is one of eight distinguished scientists named to the newly formed Scientific Advisory Committee for the Supporters of Agricultural Research (SoAR) Foundation.

University College in Arts & Sciences and the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis are partnering with LaunchCode to offer a free 16-week basic coding class, called CS50x St. Louis, beginning Jan. 19, 2016.

FoodShare is a new app that allows users to donate a meal for every meal purchased at a participating restaurant. Developed by Washington University junior Andrew Glantz, the app ​is a finalist for the Mobileys, a nationwide competition that honors entrepreneurs who make a difference through mobile innovation.

A book by Lerone Martin, PhD, assistant professor of religion and politics in the Danforth Center on Religion and Politics, has won a Certificate of Merit in the 2015 Association for Recorded Sound Collections Award for Excellence in Historical Recorded Sound Research in Blues, Gospel or R&B.

Washington University’s Alexander Barnes, a chemist, physicist, electrical engineer and molecular biologist rolled into one, just received a $2.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to develop a nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer that can determine the structure of molecules very quickly and at room temperature. His first target is a drug called bryostatin that may flush out HIV hidden in the chromosomes of our own cells.

Arpita Bose, PhD, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named a Packard Fellow, a prestigious distinction awarded to only 18 top young researchers nationwide this year. Bose plans to use the grant to work with unusual microbes that can take electrons directly from an outside source to draw down atmospheric carbon dioxide or make sustainable biofuels.

Andrew Flachs, a sociocultural anthropology graduate student in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded the Political Ecology Society Eric Wolf Prize for the best article-length paper based in substantive field research that makes an innovative contribution to political ecology.

Mike Dyer, supervisor of the greenhouse on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis, has the job many of us probably wish we had —  but only because we think he spends the day pottering around watering plants. Instead, his job requires everything from the mechanical and engineering skills needed to suppress the greenhouse’s voracious appetite for energy; extensive knowledge of insects; and the ability to grow any plant he is handed under the conditions specified. It’s not exactly relaxing, but he enjoys it that way.

Gerhild Scholz Williams explores the vast legal, scientific and theological literature known as demonology, which helped established “the image of the witch as a night-flying, sexually voracious creature.”

New research shows that an ancient protein that protects bacteria from bursting also helps pollen survive the dangerous transition from desiccated to hydrated once it lands on the female flower. But in pollen’s case, the protein has evolved to provide just the right amount of internal pressure: enough to power cell growth but not so much that the pollen bursts and dies.