In the News

Enterprise Mobility Chairman Andrew Taylor and his wife, Barbara Taylor, have gifted $50 million to Washington University’s neurosurgery department, which is being renamed the Taylor Family Department of Neurosurgery. The donation will assist the department with recruiting and retaining physicians and researchers to help drive innovation in brain tumor research, spinal surgery and neurotechnology, according to a university spokesperson.

Staff from the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture spent weeks in St. Louis this fall to help Black people find their ancestors using online genealogy tools and preserve family history with digital techniques. Joyce Huston, a blues recording artist who goes by the name Lady J, brought her family memories to Wash U and to the Missouri History Museum so her family stories could help inspire other Black St. Louisans to consider their family archives as treasures that should be viewed by many instead of boxed away in storage.

Congratulations to individuals named 2024 40 Under 40 honorees by the St. Louis Business Journal, including several Washington University in St. Louis alums.

The NEURO360 initiative from WashU and BioSTL has been named a finalist for $160-million in federal grants. Justin Raymundo, Vice President of Innovation Ecosystem-Building at BioSTL, joins Megan Lynch to explain what’s next in this KMOX story.

A new law clinic is providing free legal services for veterans in the St. Louis region. Washington University’s School of Law officially launched the Veterans Law Clinic this month. The free clinic prioritizes low- to moderate-income veterans who want to upgrade their discharge characterizations and correct military records.

Washington University in St. Louis is partnering with the St. Louis Integrated Health Network (IHN) on a five-year $3.8 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The grant is part of the CDC’s Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health (REACH) program. The funding aims to help improve health, prevent chronic diseases and reduce health disparities in the local Black community residing in the St. Louis Promise Zone.

BioSTL, the biosciences economic development organization, has named a new leader for its investment arm. The organization said this week that Dr. James McCarter, a Washington University-trained physician and biologist, has been named a senior vice president of BioSTL and senior managing director of BioGenerator Ventures.

Dr. Katherine Weilbaecher was concerned about the trends. As an oncologist at WashU Medicine specializing in metastatic breast cancer, she noticed Black patients from North County were coming to her office with more advanced cancers. She recently created a mammography clinic targeted to the high-risk population to find those cancers earlier and ensure patients receive follow-up care.

Although Vice President Kamala Harris is the first-ever Indian American candidate to win a major party’s nomination for the U.S. presidency, it would be wrong to assume she has “the Indian American vote” among St. Louisans — or anywhere else in the country — locked in. Harris’ historic candidacy has, however, ignited conversations about Indian Americans and voting. This is especially important in St. Louis because U.S. Census data show Indians make up the fastest-growing immigrant population in the St. Louis region, and second in the nation overall. Three Indian Americans in St. Louis including Jacob Chacko, executive director of Washington University’s Center of Diversity & Inclusion, spoke with St. Louis on the Air about their lives in the Midwest and how politics have played a role.

How to retain Washington University graduates and other higher education students in the St. Louis metro area is a complex question, but WashU researchers have compiled data that offers a potential path forward.