Arts & Sciences

Former Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman Jr. assesses our nation’s status at the next Assembly Series presentation, 6 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 25. in Graham Chapel.  The event is free and open to the public, though seating for the public will be limited due to an anticipated large campus turnout. Visit the Assembly Series website for more information or call 314-935-4620.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced Feb. 17 that Washington University in St. Louis’ Gary Patti has been awarded a 2014 Sloan Research Fellowship. He is among 126 outstanding U.S. and Canadian researchers selected as fellowship recipients this year. Awarded annually since 1955, the fellowships are given to early-career scientists and scholars whose achievements and potential identify them as rising stars, the next generation of scientific leaders.

Seven staff members from throughout Washington University in St. Louis will participate in this year’s Global Diversity Overseas Seminar Program. They will travel to Ghana in June. The program is designed to give staff a global perspective on diversity through seminar meetings, group discussions, assigned readings and community-engagement opportunities culminating in an international site visit to one of WUSTL’s study-abroad programs.

The Vanderhof home is filled with individualists, eccentric more than rugged, chasing assorted muses. Rooms run riot with dance rehearsals, printing presses, wild animals and small explosives. But then Alice falls in love with the son of a Wall Street executive. Can these two families — the free spirits and the moneyed snobs—ever reconcile?

Sean B. Carroll, PhD (left), vice president for science education at Howard Hughes Medical Institute, a WUSTL alum (AB ’79) and one of the country’s foremost experts on evolutionary developmental biology, returned to campus to help the Institute for School Partnership celebrate its annual Darwin Day event for area high school teachers. Instrumental in Carroll’s appearance was mentor and teacher David Kirk, PhD (right), professor emeritus of biology in Arts & Sciences, who called Carroll one of the most “distinguished graduates in biology the department has had.”

Scholars from across the nation will help kick off St. Louis’ 250th “Birthday Bash” weekend when they provide their perspectives on the city’s historical significance during a daylong symposium Friday, Feb. 14, at the Missouri History Museum in Forest Park. The symposium will be held from 9 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. in Lee Auditorium. The symposium luncheon will be held at Washington University in St. Louis.

Some WUSTL faculty members have received awards from the Fulbright Program for academic pursuits in areas ranging from architecture to education to medicine. 

A recent gift of $1,025,000 will establish the Suren G. Dutia and Jas K. Grewal Global Impact Award in the Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at Washington University. The endowed fund will receive $1 million, with the remaining $25,000 to support awards made during the current academic year. Applications are being accepted until March 24 for awards to support business ventures aimed at catalyzing social change.

Daniel Giuffra, a freshman and Annika Rodriguez Scholar at Washington University in St. Louis, discussed his anti-smoking work as part of a recent U.S. Food and Drug Administration news conference announcing a new effort to curb tobacco use among at-risk youth.

A WUSTL team learned last month that they had won the Gold Medal for their analysis of a problem during the international University Physics Competition, held in November. Using the principles of physics, they predicted characteristics of an animal on an extraterrestrial planet.