Arts & Sciences

Commencement student speakers Bryanna Brown, of Atlanta, and Noor Ghanam, who has lived in cities across the globe, took different journeys to Washington University in St. Louis, but on Friday, May 20, both will converge on the stage at Francis Olympic Field to address their fellow members of the Class of 2022.

A new modeling framework proposed by physicist Mikhail Tikhonov in Arts & Sciences demonstrates how a more complex microbial ecosystem can be more coarse-grainable, making it potentially easier for scientists to understand, than one with only a few microbes interacting.

Otto Brown, a rising senior studying economics and political science in Arts & Sciences, has been recognized by the All In Campus Democracy Challenge as a member of its All In Student Voting Honor Roll.

New research from the lab of psychologist Calvin Lai in Arts & Sciences shows that the racial demographics of a county, more than other factors, help predict discrepancies when it comes to who gets pulled over by police.

Michael Nowak, research professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, is part of the global research team that shared the first image of the supermassive black hole at the center of our own Milky Way galaxy.

Ethan Lowder, a December 2021 graduate who majored in the biochemistry track of biology in Arts & Sciences, won the Ralph S. Quatrano Prize; Kayla Wallace, a senior majoring in environmental biology with a minor in anthropology in Arts & Sciences, received the Spector Prize.

Research from the Living Earth Collaborative highlights the cascading consequences of common parasitic infections. Although many of these infections are not lethal, they can still impact health or animal behavior, leading hosts to eat less vegetation. The study led by biologist Amanda Koltz in Arts & Sciences is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Gabriella Smith, a senior biology major in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is a champion for access to mental health services. She hopes to combine her passion for working with children with her leadership skills to pursue a career in medicine that incorporates patient care, research and advocacy.

At the end of high school, twins Akhil and Rohith Kesaraju were ready to go their own ways. Then they visited Washington University, and everything changed. Now, preparing to graduate, the Kesaraju twins have grown both apart and together on parallel paths of service and research.

Eileen G’Sell, senior lecturer in Arts & Sciences, has published two pieces on French filmmaker Céline Sciamma as well as the Current Affairs essay “What Do Women Really Deserve?”