News

WashU Olin Business School’s entrepreneurship program will award two $25,000 grants in December to WashU-founded or St. Louis-based startups.

The City of St. Louis is prone to an urban heat island effect, a phenomenon caused by dense areas of pavement, flat roofs, brick buildings and other surfaces that absorb heat from the sun, radiating it back into the surrounding air. Research published by Climate Central shows that some urban areas see temperatures as much as 10 degrees hotter than rural areas that enjoy more widespread vegetation and shade. In St. Louis, the Midwest Climate Collaborative at Washington University works to study heat islands and their effects on quality of life in the region. The university’s Tyson Research Center has been actively gathering data and studying the impacts of heat islands, too.

The Financial Times recently showcased the International Institute of St. Louis’s efforts to grow the St. Louis metro population by recruiting immigrants and refugees to live and work in the area. The Financial Times article also said the St. Louis metro area “stands out in both its method and ambition” to increase foreign-born communities and in how nonprofit, governmental, and business communities have come together to support the effort.

In the spring 2024 semester, students in Assistant Professor Kelley Van Dyck Murphy’s Fields + Frames course created temporary public art installations in St. Louis’ Cortex Innovation District. The course was funded by a grant from the Office for Socially Engaged Practice and a teaching grant from the Sam Fox School.

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.