McKelvey School of Engineering

If Congress and President Obama don’t reach a compromise before the end of the year to avoid the “fiscal cliff,” it will have major consequences on Washington University in St. Louis as well as other universities and colleges across the country, say WUSTL administrators​​.

That’s not a new parking meter or air pump for your tires outside of Brauer Hall — it’s a charging station for electric vehicles. This first charging station on the Danforth Campus is another step in the university’s commitment to sustainability. A ceremony to celebrate the installation is set for 3:30 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 29, outside of Brauer Hall. A station also is planned for the Millbrook Parking Facility and more may follow, depending on demand. 

To encourage entrepreneurship, the university’s Bear Cub Fund program is now providing mentors and other hands-on guidance. Initial, one-page applications are due Dec. 10.

Nanostructures called BRIGHTs seek out biomarkers on cells and then beam brightly to reveal their locations. In the tiny gap between the gold skin and the gold core of the nanoparticle, there is an electromagnetic hot spot that lights up the reporter molecules trapped there. BRIGHTs, which shine about 1.7 x 1011 more brightly than isolated Raman reporters, are intended for use in noninvasive bioimaging.

Today, a group of the nation’s leading universities announced plans to launch a new, innovative program that transforms the model of online education. The new online education program, Semester Online, will be the first of its kind to offer undergraduate students the opportunity to take rigorous, online courses for credit from a consortium of universities. The program is delivered through a virtual classroom environment and interactive platform developed by 2U, formerly known as 2tor.

Washington University in St. Louis has taken a leadership role in helping to shape the future of online education by being a catalyst to bring together a consortium of the nation’s leading colleges and universities that plans to launch Semester Online. This program is a transformative new model for online education, offering undergraduate students the opportunity to take rigorous, online courses for credit from consortium schools.

Mantis shrimp, aggressive, predatory sea crustaceans, have among the most sophisticated vision of all animals. A group of researchers, including Viktor Gruev, PhD, want to recreate that vision to make a specialized camera that could bring more precision to biomedical imaging and weapon targeting in defense.

Detecting whether a patient will have acute kidney injury could become as simple as dipping a paper test strip printed with gold nanorods into a urine sample, a team of Washington University in St. Louis researchers has found.

Two scientists at Washington University have developed a low-energy defibrillation scheme that significantly reduces the energy needed to re-establish a normal rhythm in the heart’s main chambers. They hope this electrotherapy will be much less painful than the existing electrotherapy, making treatment with a defibrillator much more acceptable to patients.

Sunscreen contains nanoparticles to protect our skin by reflecting hazardous ultraviolet radiation from the sun. But what happens to those nanoparticles when you wash the sunscreen away? Young-Shin Jun, PhD, has received a three-year, $382,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to determine the physical and chemical evolution of environmental and engineered nanoparticles in natural and engineered aquatic systems, such as wastewater treatment plants.