McKelvey School of Engineering

An interdisciplinary team of researchers and students from the School of Engineering and Applied Science, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis is working to create a more sustainable future for the university. Over the last year, teams have developed an experimental framework for testing environmentally friendly redevelopment strategies in a group of University-owned apartment buildings north of the Delmar Loop.

A recent report from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor indicates that there are significantly fewer female entrepreneurs than male entrepreneurs around the world. This is not the case, however, at Washington University in St. Louis, where more than 40 percent of successful companies started by recent graduates through the university’s business entrepreneurship courses have been founded by women.

In patients with early Alzheimer’s disease, disruptions in brain networks emerge about the same time as chemical markers of the disease appear in the spinal fluid, School of Medicine researchers have shown. Pictured is senior author of the study, Beau Ances, MD, PhD, associate professor of neurology and of biomedical engineering.

Shelly Sakiyama-Elbert, PhD, has been elected to the Biomedical Engineering Society Class of 2013 Fellows. Sakiyama-Elbert, professor and associate chair of biomedical engineering, was one of seven elected to the class. Fellows are selected for demonstrating exceptional achievements and experience in the biomedical engineering field and for their membership and participation in the society.

Lihong Wang, PhD, will receive the 2014 IEEE Biomedical Engineering Award, the highest honor conferred by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) in this field. Wang, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, was selected for his pioneering contributions to the field of photoacoustic tomography, a novel imaging technology he developed that uses light and sound to measure change.

Washington University students still can enroll in one of the 11 online courses being offered this fall through Semester Online, a consortium of top peer universities. Students have until Aug. 26 to register. Courses include a live weekly class plus pre-produced online content that engages students, such as guest interviews and panel discussions.

Kevin Hays is considered one of the globe’s best Rubik’s Cube solvers, but he’s not the only Rubik’s Cube master on the Washington University in St. Louis campus. Provost Holden Thorp also won Rubik’s Cube competitions as a teenager.

A team of researchers, led by Arye Nehorai, PhD, the Eugene and Martha Lohman Professor of Electrical Engineering and chair of the Preston M. Green Department of Electrical & Systems Engineering, has received a one-year grant from Washington University’s International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy & Sustainability (I-CARES) to take an interdisciplinary, “human-centered” approach to making buildings more energy efficient.

Mark Anastasio, PhD, has been named interim chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science effective July 15. Anastasio, professor of biomedical engineering, succeeds Frank Yin, MD, PhD, the Stephen F. and Camilla T. Brauer Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering, who stepped down as chair in May after leading the department for more than 15 years.

Brent Williams, PhD, of the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a nearly $300,000 Early Career grant from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to bring his expertise in measuring particles in the atmosphere to a national study of the climate trend in the southeastern United States as well as the St. Louis area.