School of Medicine

Scanning the DNA of two people with a rare disease has led scientists to identify the precise genetic error responsible for their disorder, which causes persistent lung, sinus and ear infections, male infertility, and sometimes a reversed orientation of major organs in the body. The defect affects hair-like structures called cilia that extend from many cells in the body.

Wayne M. Yokoyama, MD, and Charles F. Zorumski, MD, have been elected to the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences. Membership in the organization is one of the highest honors physician-scientists in the U.S. can receive.​

Some Halloween news tips refuse to die, rising from the newsroom morgue each October with a stubborn resolve to once again help trick-or-treaters stay safe on Halloween night. Here’s three timely safety tips that remain very much undead.

Interdisciplinary faculty collaboration is fast becoming a hallmark of Washington University in St. Louis. To help support interdisciplinary teaching, the Office of the Provost announces the second round of the Interdisciplinary Teaching Grant Program. The application deadline for the teaching grants is December 1. In order to assist prospective applicants in putting together proposals, the Provost will hold a workshop from 3:30-5 p.m. in DUC 234 on October 23 facilitated by faculty who were successful in the previous round. Please RSVP for the workshop to Marion G. Crain, JD, the Wiley B. Rutledge Professor of Law and vice provost at WUSTL, at mgcrain@wulaw.wustl.edu.

Andrew Yoo, Robert Gereau and Michael Bruchas have been awarded grants from the National Institues of Health Common Fund to pursue visionary research that has the potential to transform science and improve human health.

Brian K. Kobilka, MD, a former medical resident at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, is the winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.

William G. Powderly, MD, will lead global health initiatives as a newly appointed deputy director of Washington University’s Institute of Public Health. He also will serve as co-director of the Division of Infectious Diseases in the Department of Medicine at the university’s School of Medicine. ​

Andrew and Barbara Taylor and the Crawford Taylor Foundation, the charity of the entire Jack C. Taylor family, have committed $20 million to the Department of Psychiatry at the School of Medicine to advance the science underlying the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illnesses. The gift creates the new Taylor Family Institute for Innovative Psychiatric Research.

Providing birth control to women at no cost substantially reduced unplanned pregnancies and cut abortion rates by 62 percent to 77 percent over the national rate, a new study shows.

Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis is one of five U.S. medical schools to receive a $250,000 Alfred P. Sloan Award for Faculty Career Flexibility.