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The National Science Foundation has awarded a team led by Washington University researchers a $26 million, five-year grant to investigate ways to use existing carbon dioxide for manufacturing through biological systems. WashU’s McKelvey School of Engineering is leading the project, called the Carbon Utilization Redesign for Biomanufacturing-Empowered Decarbonization (CURB) Engineering Research Center. Marcus Foston, co-principal investigator and […]

WashU alums Shannon Levin and Marina Peng understand that the very nature of public art makes it difficult to gauge how it resonates with the people viewing it. Yet if they ever doubt that their public art project, PSA, strikes a chord with St. Louis audiences, they can recall a recent story about what happened when two passers-by encountered one of their installations.

To minimize the impact of man-made climate change, it is essential to significantly and rapidly decrease carbon dioxide emissions while simultaneously meeting the energy and manufacturing needs of a healthy and economically stable society. A powerhouse collaboration of universities and industry, led by the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is embarking on a bold plan to transform manufacturing toward zero or negative emissions by converting carbon dioxide ultimately into environmentally friendly chemicals and products that create a circular economy.

Dr. Lannis Hall faces an auditorium full of young women at Hazelwood East High School. She’s there to talk about health – breast health. As a radiation oncologist from Washington University in St. Louis, Hall is aware these high school students are likely years away from needing mammograms or other breast screenings. However, she wants them to begin understanding how they can start reducing their cancer risk now and to encourage them to share this knowledge with their loved ones. Such was the inspiration for the “Go Tell Your Momma” initiative, through which Hall presents at Hazelwood School District’s East, Central and West high schools.

GeoFutures – the initiative of Greater St. Louis, Inc. working to advance St. Louis’ geospatial technology sector – announced today that Ritika Tejwani, a Business and Computer Science Major at Washington University in St. Louis, is the winner of this year’s GeoFutures STL Scholarship, funded through the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation.  

In Missouri, women hold only two of the 10 seats in the U.S. House and Senate (20%), 55 state legislature seats (28%) and no statewide elected executive seats, according to the Center for American Women and Politics. Illinois fares somewhat better, with seven women among the 19 seats in the U.S. House and Senate (37%), 76 women in state legislature seats (43%) and two women among the six statewide elected executive seats. While both states are in line with nationwide averages, they still have a long way to go to achieve equity in women’s representation. A new program offered at Washington University in St. Louis aims to change that.

Early in the morning of a summer day, high school students Hope Jett and Kari Koerner are counting mosquitoes in a tree-canopied clearing of Tyson Research Center, Washington University in St. Louis’ sprawling environmental field station in west St. Louis County. They are part of the Mosquito Team, a WashU research project to better understand the ecology and evolution of mosquitoes.

This fall, the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum at Washington University in St. Louis will present “Design Agendas: Modern Architecture in St. Louis, 1930s–1970s.” With nearly 300 architectural drawings, models, photographs, films, digital maps and artworks, “Design Agendas” is the first major exhibition to examine how interlocking civic, cultural and racial histories, as well as conflicting ideological aims, reshaped the city.

A group led by BioSTL and Washington University recently applied for $160 million in grant funding to boost the region’s neuroscience and neurotech ecosystems.

When Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed Black teenager, was fatally shot in 2014 by a white police officer and his body left in the street under the August sun, the small St. Louis suburb of Ferguson roiled and plunged into crisis. The protests drew activists from across the nation, amplified the national Black Lives Matter movement and fueled larger questions about race in America. And at a more grass-roots level, it created a political incubator of emerging local leaders: A new generation of young protesters who came of age during the Ferguson uprising have found ways to chip away at the racial disparities in Ferguson and nearby St. Louis, shifting from protests to politics and policies.