Arts & Sciences

It was bedlam at mission control when the first images of Pluto came down over the Deep Space Network. Not only were there few craters, but some areas of the planet were smooth as a billiard ball and others rumpled and rippled; some stained the color of dried blood and others gleaming bright white. The variety meant that there was geology on Pluto, alien though the geological processes might be to earthlings.​

Paige McGinley, assistant professor of performing arts in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received the American Theatre and Drama Society’s 2014 John W. Frick Award for the best book in American theater and drama for her book, “Staging the Blues: From Tent Shows to Tourism.”

Washington University in St. Louis student Beakal M. Gezahegn has been named a 2015 STRIDE Undergraduate Research Fellow by the American Physiological Society.

​Victims of chronic flooding, dozens of homes in Baden neighborhood will be demolished this summer. But a team of Washington University in St. Louis researchers, together with the City of St. Louis, the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Missouri Department of Conservation, are determined to help the community create something better in the neighborhood.​

Robert Mark Morgan, senior lecturer in drama in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received the 2015 St. Louis Theater Circle award for outstanding set design in a musical for “Seussical” at the Muny.

​Frank K. Flinn, PhD, an outspoken expert on religious freedom and the constitutional rights of fringe religious groups, died Saturday, July 4,2015. He was 76.​

The Pew Charitable Trusts have named two early-career faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis among their Pew scholars in the biomedical sciences. They are Qin Liu, PhD, of the School of Medicine, and Gary J. Patti, PhD, of Arts & Sciences.

Sean M. Savoie, senior lecturer in drama and coordinator of the design-technical theater program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, taught a professional development class at the Entertainment Technology New Zealand Inc. (ETNZ) 2015 Conference: “Big Steps Forward.”

Wilmetta Toliver-Diallo, PhD, assistant dean in the College of Arts & Sciences and senior lecturer in African and African-American Studies at Washington University in St. Louis, has been appointed to University City’s Municipal Commission on Arts & Letters.

Scientists attending a workshop at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory  slipped the leash of scientific caution and tried to imagine what they would do if they could redesign plants at will. The ideas they dreamed up may make the difference between full bellies and empty ones in the near future when population may outrun the ability of traditional plant breeding to increase yields.