School of Medicine

First-year students at the School of Medicine participated Friday, Aug. 14, in the traditional White Coat Ceremony — a rite of passage in which future doctors are welcomed to the medical school and the medical profession. The class also recited an oath promising honesty and integrity.

The Washington University and Barnes-Jewish Hospital Pulmonary Hypertension Center, under the direction of Murali Chakinala, MD, associate professor of medicine, has received accreditation from the Pulmonary Hypertension Association as a Center for Comprehensive Care, the association’s highest level achievable.

St. Louis College of Pharmacy students began using the new staff garage on Duncan Avenue Monday, Aug. 17, and Goldfarb School of Nursing at Barnes-Jewish College students are scheduled to begin using it Aug. 26. As construction around the garage area finishes, staff will be able to begin parking there.

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have received a $7 million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation aimed at eliminating river blindness and elephantiasis, two neglected tropical diseases that annually sicken millions.

A team of Washington University students on the Medical Campus recently won top honors in the Neuro Startup Challenge, a biotech startup competition designed to commercialize promising brain-related discoveries of scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).The team developed a business plan to commercialize a test for patients with multiple sclerosis.

Erika Pearce, PhD, associate professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a four-year, $1.26 million grant from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and, separately, a $500,000 grant for metabolism research.

Scientists have identified a pathway that leads to the formation of atypical blood vessels that can cause blindness in people with age-related macular degeneration. The research, at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, sheds light on one of the leading causes of blindness in industrialized countries and offers potential targets for treating the disease.

Andy Maus was the guy who used to alert undergraduate students via text message they had a package in the mailroom. Now he’s working as clinical research coordinator in the lab of Ravi Vij, MD. Here’s the story of how Maus went from the medical school to the mailroom — and back again.

The American College of Cardiology has named Douglas L. Mann, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine the first editor-in-chief of its newest journal, JACC: Basic Translational Research. A monthly, open-access publication, the new journal will launch its inaugural issue in December.

Joshua Sommovilla, MD, a resident in the Department of Surgery at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has been awarded the 2015 Outstanding Resident Teaching Award by the Association for Surgical Education. He received the award at the association’s annual meeting this past spring in Seattle.