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IN THIS ISSUE:
University News
Research
Features
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HEARD ON CAMPUS
"It should not be a Herculean effort to graduate high school… one of the great things about education is that it gives you control over your own [life]. There are a lot of good causes out there, and a shortage of people to take them on."
~ John Legend, Grammy Award-winning musician and activist, during his talk about the U.S. educational system, in Graham Chapel on April 6, 2012
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KUDOS:
Tej Azad,
a junior biology-neuroscience major with a minor in philosophy-neuroscience-psychology, was among 162 students from across the country named a Newman Civic Fellow for 2012 by Campus Compact. The Newman Civic Fellows Awards recognize inspiring college student leaders who have demonstrated an investment in finding solutions for challenges facing communities throughout the country and the world.
John R. Bowen,
Ph.D., the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor in Arts & Sciences, has been selected for a prestigious fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. He was among the 181 Guggenheim Fellows chosen in 2012 from nearly 3,000 scholars, artists and scientists in the United States and Canada. The Guggenheim Fellowship is awarded on the basis of prior achievement and exceptional promise. |
Madeleine Daepp,
a junior economics and mathematics major, and Ethan Lynch, a junior majoring in international and area studies with a second major in Arabic language and literature and a minor in political science, were selected as 2012 Truman Scholars. They will receive $30,000 in funding, including $3,000 for their senior year and $27,000 for two or three years of graduate study. The 54 scholars in the 2012 class were selected from among 587 candidates nominated by 292 colleges and universities. Candidates are selected after an arduous application process. Washington University is one of six institutions nationwide to have multiple Truman Scholars.
Madeleine Daepp,
and Jeremy Pivor, a junior environmental biology major with a minor in public health, won the Udall Scholarship. Daepp recently learned that she has also won a Truman scholarship. Udall scholarships are granted to those who demonstrate a commitment to fields related to the environment or to Native American or native Alaskan students in fields related to health care and tribal public policy. It covers tuition, fees, books and room and board to a maximum of $5,000 per year.
Rachel Greenstein,
a junior biology major, Jennifer Head, a junior chemical engineering major, and Jenny Liu, , a junior electrical and biomedical engineering major, are winners of the Goldwater Scholarship. The Goldwater Scholarship is considered one of the most prestigious awards for undergraduates planning careers in the sciences, engineering or math. It covers as much as $7,500 annually toward tuition, fees and books for either one or two years.
Daniel Rubin,
a senior political science and history major, is among 18 students nationwide to be selected as Luce Scholars. Rubin is the sixth student in Washington University’s history to win the award. He was selected from a pool of 143 candidates nominated by 62 colleges and universities. Selection is determined after a rigorous interview process. |
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University News
Janji, a socially conscious running shorts business created by members of the Washington University cross country team, will release its original running apparel at a public launch party in St. Louis Thursday, May 3. “This public release is something we’ve been building towards for two years,” says Mike Burnstein, a senior urban studies major, an avid runner and one of the founders of Janji, proceeds of which go to fight world hunger and water needs. ... more
Washington University will award six honorary degrees during the university’s 151st Commencement May 18. During the ceremony, which will begin at 8:30 a.m. in Brookings Quadrangle on the Danforth Campus, Washington University also will bestow academic degrees on approximately 2,800 members of the Class of 2012. Alumnus Mike Peters, the 1981 Pulitzer Prize winner for editorial cartooning and creator of the award-winning cartoon strip Mother Goose & Grimm, will deliver the Commencement address and receive an honorary doctor of humane letters degree. ... more
Washington University Libraries have announced the launch of Open Scholarship — openscholarship.wustl.edu — a new institutional online repository providing access to the scholarly output of faculty, students and staff from Washington University. The purpose of Open Scholarship is to provide easier access to the academic work of Washington University scholars, gathering items in a single digital place. ... more
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Research
Nurse bees tending to brood in cells both open and capped with beeswax. Recent work at Washington University suggests that the division of labor in honeybee colonies is controlled by small segments of noncoding RNA called micro-RNAs, or miRNAs.
PHOTO: Travis Mohrman
What worker bees do depends on how old they are. A worker a few days old will become a nurse bee that devotes herself to feeding larvae (brood), secreting beeswax to seal the cells that contain brood, and attending to the queen. After about a week, she will progress to other tasks, such as grooming nest mates, ventilating the nest and packing pollen. Only at the end of her life will she become a forager, venturing forth to collect nectar and pollen for the colony. Yehuda Ben-Shahar, Ph.D., assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, wondered if this highly stereotyped system of task allocation wasn’t somehow under genetic control. ... more
Kidney stones strike an estimated 1 million Americans each year, and those who have experienced the excruciating pain say it is among the worst known to man (or woman). Now, new research by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine provides evidence to explain why some people are more prone to develop the condition than others. Their discovery opens the door to finding effective drug treatments and a test that could assess a person’s risk of kidney stones. ... more
In a down economy where advertisers are concerned about every dollar spent, a team of researchers at Washington University has developed a new method of measuring the effectiveness of Google search advertising, taking into account not only online sales but also goods or services purchased off-line. The 2012 Olin Award-winning paper, “Measuring the Lifetime Value of Customers Acquired from Google Search Advertising,” finds that the conventional method of measuring the return on investment of online search ads is limited and fails to take into account the potential for “cross-channel sales spillover.” ... more
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Features
Lewis Wall, M.D. (center), addresses the crowd at the grand opening of the Danja Fistula Center in Niger, Africa.
PHOTO: Courtesy Photo
For Lewis Wall, M.D., a dream has come true. For almost 20 years, he worked doggedly to build a hospital in one of the world’s poorest countries to treat women with a devastating childbirth injury. His dream became a reality in February, when a 42-bed hospital opened in Niger, Africa. The facility is dedicated to repairing fistulas, wounds inflicted by prolonged labor, which leave women — and often girls — steadily leaking urine and sometimes feces. ... more
Hyundai Motor Company recently awarded a $100,000 contract to the Modeling, Analysis and Process-control Laboratory for Electrochemical systems (MAPLE) Lab at Washington University to incorporate electrochemical model-based code in a battery management system for advanced automotive batteries. The contract, says MAPLE, is probably one of the first of its kind (publicly announced). If this approach is successful, this could have a transformative effect on how batteries are used in the electric cars—bringing down their cost, environmental footprint and improving their safety, MAPLE suggests. ... more
The nation’s top 20 publicly traded firms could have added nearly $1 trillion to their market value if, in 2010, they had used a new tool, known as the research quotient (RQ), to determine their research and development (R&D) budgets, says its creator, Anne Marie Knott, Ph.D., associate professor of strategy at Washington University. “The longer-term benefits are even greater,” Knott says, “as RQ also allows companies to more closely link changes in R&D strategy, practices and processes to profitability and value.”... more
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