Arts & Sciences

Red colobus monkeys are the most threatened group of African monkeys. With a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), a Washington University team will model viral transmission dynamics among red colobus monkeys and their human neighbors near Kibale National Park, Uganda.

Biologist Himadri Pakrasi in Arts & Sciences, who studies how cyanobacteria contribute to the chemistry of life, will lead a $5 million effort to develop technology to convert atmospheric nitrogen into fertilizer. Yinjie Tang and Yixin Chen at the McKelvey School of Engineering are co-investigators on the project.

“Digital Learning and Teaching in Chemistry,” co-edited by Gabriela Mirowitz in Arts & Sciences, features WashU chemistry instructors and explores high-tech approaches to learning beyond the lab.

“Object Lessons,” the long-running series of pocket-sized books that explores the secret lives of ordinary things, is now based in the Program in Public Scholarship in Arts & Sciences.

Research by David Carter in Arts & Sciences suggests instability around the world and in the Middle East was likely a contributing factor in Hamas’ decision to attack Israel on Oct. 7.

Physicist Mikhail Tikhonov, in Arts & Sciences, developed a new statistical model that could help design microbial communities for performing certain functions.

Researchers at the McKelvey School of Engineering have long sought to understand the power of locusts’ sensing, computing and locomotory capabilities.

Shopping. Driving. Parenting. Eating out. Working out. Today, sources of adventure are as limitless as a marketer’s imagination. No activity is too mundane, no product too crass, no invocation too preposterous. In Adventure: An Argument for Limits, Christopher Schaberg grapples with classical conceptions of adventure, their 21st-century simulacra, and the earnest question: What constitutes adventure today?

First-year Washington University students may have a lot to learn about media literacy in 2023, but so do the rest of us. It starts, says Eileen G’Sell, MFA ’06, with understanding that audience is everything.

Petra Levin, a professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, was installed as a George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology in a Sept. 19 ceremony held in Holmes Lounge. Her installation address was titled “The Environment Matters.”