McKelvey School of Engineering

Scientists have combined two existing forms of medical imaging — photoacoustic and ultrasound — to generate high-contrast, high-resolution images that could help doctors spot tumors more quickly.

The Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research (OVCR) has announced the six winners of the 2012 University Research Strategic Alliance (URSA) grants. The grants offer a one-year, $25,000 award to full-time faculty members at WUSTL who begin a new collaboration with investigators from different disciplines. Researchers who receive the seed funding will work together in a new area of research or plan to approach a problem in a different way.

The Department of Energy (DOE) announced that a team of engineers at WUSTL will receive $2 million to design a battery management system for lithium-ion batteries that will guarantee their longevity, safety and performance. These technologies could revolutionize the way Americans store and use energy in electric vehicles, the electrical grid and beyond.

Engineers at Washington University in St. Louis will be working on low-cost solar cells and systems that integrate solar cells with batteries as part of $125 million U.S.-India Initiative for Clean Energy announced this year. The technology is designed to help India leapfrog energy technologies, moving directly to low-emission electricity generation and bypassing as much as possible fossil-fuel electrical generation.

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis who were decoding the activity of populations of neurons in the motor cortex discovered that they could tell how a monkey was planning to approach a reaching task. By chance the two monkeys chosen for the study had completely different cognitive styles. One was a hyperactive type, who kept jumping the gun, and the other was a smooth operator, who waited for the entire setup to be revealed before planning his next move. The difference is clearly visible in their decoded brain activity, allowing the scientists, in effect, to read their minds.

The National Institutes of Health has awarded more than $2 million to a team of scientists from Washington University in St. Louis and InvivoSciences, a biotechnology startup with WUSTL roots, to construct artificial tissue models that will allow the rapid testing of new drugs for heart failure.

WUSTL employees interested in going back to school are invited to attend a joint information session for graduate evening programs at Olin Business School and the Henry Edwin Sever Institute. Free and open to all employees, the event is at 6 p.m. Thursday, July 12, in the Danforth University Center, Room 276.

A new model for understanding how nerve cells in the brain control movement may help unlock the secrets of the motor cortex, a critical region that has long resisted scientists’ efforts to understand it, researchers report June 3 in Nature.

Parkway South High School senior Will Mertz explains the design of his team’s custom-built hand glider to Chris Kroeger, associate dean for students in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, during the Boeing Engineering Challenge May 4 in the Athletic Complex Field House. Mertz was among some 80 area high school students in 24 teams competing in the Boeing Challenge to determine which team’s glider had the farthest flight, straightest path, longest hang time or highest quality of flight.

WUSTL’s entry in Formula SAE, a student competition to design and drive a Formula-style race car organized by the Society of Automotive Engineers, was unveiled May 7. The car did well in competition at the Michigan International Speedway — until the last event,  where it lost its steering after the first lap of an endurance test.