DBBS Hooding and Recognition Ceremony

On Friday, May 20th awarded 13 PhD students and 17 MD/PhD students their degrees. Here are a few pictures taken on that day. We are so proud of our graduates and wish them the best in all of their future endeavours!

Washington People: Kathryn G. Miller

Kathryn G. Miller, PhD (center), professor and chair of the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences, examines petri dishes with Julie Morrison (right), senior technician, and Mamiko Isaji, PhD, postdoctoral researcher, both in biology. Miller “cares deeply for the people of Washington University and is especially great with students and the young faculty,” says Erik D. Herzog, PhD, associate professor of biology.

By Nancy Fowler

Her nose habitually buried in a Nancy Drew mystery, little Kathy Miller spent much of her girlhood trying to crack the case.

Today, Kathryn G. Miller, PhD, professor and chair of the Department of Biology in Arts & Sciences, still is playing detective.

With Sherlock Holmes-like intensity, Miller studies cells the way a special agent scrutinizes a crime scene. The adjectives “curious,” “detailed” and “practical” sum up Miller’s modus operandi as she focuses on how certain proteins allow particular cells to perform precise functions.

“That’s the way I look at things,” Miller says. “I’ve got to figure out how they work.”

Love on a cellular level


A Chicago-area middle school teacher sparked the passion that eventually would lead to Miller’s own teaching career. With fond memories, she recalls the contagious enthusiasm of her young seventh-grade science instructor — fortuitously named Mr. Bliss.

“I remember looking at pictures of cells and being incredibly interested in what they were and what they were made up of,” Miller says. “I was kind of a nerd.”

Miller’s love of life sciences took her to Lawrence University in Appleton, Wis., for an undergraduate degree in chemistry and shortly thereafter to Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, where she earned a doctorate.

It was during postdoctoral work at the University of California, San Francisco, that Miller began studying multicellular organisms. In 1989, she came to WUSTL to teach and continue her research; in 2008, she became chair of the biology department.
Even while overseeing 30 biology faculty members, Miller maintains a keen focus on research.

Her work zeroes in on how cells specialize to perform specific functions in a multicellular organism. Of particular interest is how the cells’ structural proteins contribute to three features and activities: assuming different shapes, connecting with various components and having functional properties critical to their roles.

An important byproduct of her research

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