Arts & Sciences

Jeannette Cooperman and John Griswold, both staff writers for The Common Reader, the journal of essays and ideas housed at Washington University, have been named to the Notable Essays list in “Best American Essays 2023.”

Washington University scientists have documented 10 different bat species in our area, including several threatened and endangered bats.

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?