2010 I-CARES Research Awards Announced: Three DBBS Faculty Among Awardees

The International Center for Advanced Renewable Energy and Sustainability (I-CARES) was founded in 2007 at Washington University in St. Louis to foster research on energy, environment and sustainability that cannot be done by single investigators alone.

I-CARES nurtures collaboration within WUSTL and with regional and international partners in order to speed progress in addressing the great challenges facing our world.

As part of its mission, I-CARES awards seed funding to university faculty undertaking innovative and collaborative research in the broad areas of bioenergy and sustainability through an annual call for proposals.

The 2010 I-CARES research grants in the amount of nearly $300,000 have been awarded to 11 faculty from four schools: Arts & Sciences, the School of Engineering & Applied Science, the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts and the School of Medicine.

The recipients and their research projects are:.....

2010 I-CARES research awards announced | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis

3 DBBS Faculty among those awarded Bear Cub Grants

Drs. Dennis Hallahan, Evan Kharasch & Linda Sandell receive support for innovative research:

Washington University has awarded five Bear Cub Fund grants totaling $165,000 to support innovative research that has shown commercial potential.

The funding will help scientists further develop their technology and take it to the proof-of-principal stage.

The grants were awarded to:

• Patrick Crowley, PhD, associate professor of computer science and engineering;
• Dennis Hallahan, MD, the Elizabeth H. and James S. McDonnell III Distinguished Professor in Medicine and head of the Department of Radiation Oncology;
• Eric Leuthardt, MD, assistant professor of neurological surgery and of neurobiology;
• John Morrisey, PhD, research professor of anesthesiology, and Evan Kharasch, MD, PhD, vice chancellor for research and the Russell and Mary Shelden Professor of Anesthesiology; and
• Linda Sandell, PhD, the Mildred B. Simon Research Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, and Zhepeng Wang, PhD, a scientist in her lab.

Bear Cub grants awarded to WUSTL scientists | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis

Three WUSTL biologists earn national honors

DBBS Faculty Members Tuan-hua David Ho & Ralph Quatrano, along with DBBS graduate student Ashley Galant recognized by American Society of Plant Biologists

Three Washington University in St. Louis scientists were honored this year by the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB), two for sustained achievement in their careers, and the third for a promising beginning.

Tuan-hua David Ho, PhD, professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, was elected president of the American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) for 2009-10. The ASPB, with 5,000 members, is one of the largest and most influential plant biology societies in the world.

Founded in 1924, its mission is to encourage and publish research in plant biology and to promote the interests of plant scientists. The ASPB publishes the highly cited and respected journals Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell.

Ralph S. Quatrano, PhD, the Spencer T. Olin Professor of Biology in Arts & Sciences and dean designate of the School of Engineering & Applied Science, won the Adolph E. Gude, Jr. Award, given every third year for outstanding service to the science of plant biology.

Ashley Galant, a graduate student in the lab of Joseph M. Jez, PhD, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, was awarded the Pioneer Hi-Bred graduate student fellowship. The fellowship recognizes innovative graduate research in areas of plant biology that relate to important commodity crops.....

Three WUSTL biologists earn national honors | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis

Stuart Kornfeld receives prestigious Kober Medal

Stuart A. Kornfeld, MD, the David C. and Betty Farrell Professor of Medicine, has received one of the highest awards in academic medicine, the 2010 George M. Kober Medal, from the Association of American Physicians.

Kornfeld was presented the award on April 23 during the association's annual meeting in Chicago.

"The Kober Medal has always had a special meaning to me because of the extraordinary achievements of its previous recipients," Kornfeld says. "I am deeply honored to have been selected."...

Kornfeld receives prestigious Kober Medal | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis

Alison Goate appointed Director of Hope Center for Neurological Disorders

Goate appointed director of Hope Center for Neurological Disorders | Newsroom | Washington University in St. Louis

Following his instincts: Sleckman's intuition pays off in teaching, research

Barry Sleckman, MD, PhD, was a busy young entrepreneur and disaffected commuter college student when his life began taking a sudden series of unexpected turns in the late 1970s. One weekend, a close friend seeking a job with the state police urged Sleckman, now the Conan Professor and director of Laboratory and Genomic Medicine at Washington University School of Medicine, to come to the civil service exam with him to boost his morale and ease his worries. Sleckman agreed to do it, but when they arrived at the exam, Sleckman found out the only way he could go in was if he took the exam, too.

"I passed the test, the medical and physical fitness exams, the psychiatric and background checks, and, three months later, they called me back and said, ‘Congratulations, you're a member of the 95th New Jersey State Police Academy,’" he says.

Sleckman took a look at the golf-club repair business he founded at age 12 and ran from his parents' basement (with three employees) and at the busy work in college that kept cluttering up his schedule and decided that perhaps destiny was calling.

He knew he was mistaken before a year had passed. But his eight-month stint in the state police left him fascinated by the medical work he'd seen paramedics perform and wondering if he could become a doctor....

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Checking Cancer: Longmore pursues winning goals, on and of the ice

He's Canadian, he plays hockey and he has had a brush with Olympic glory. That's Gregory D. Longmore, MD, professor of medicine in the Division of Hematology.

No, he didn't play on an Olympic hockey team. Longmore's ice time is more recreational than professional, but he once conducted scientific research that cast new light on the athletic prowess of an Olympic gold medalist.

In the early 1990s as a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Longmore found a genetic mutation in a red blood cell hormone receptor that caused mice to produce extra red blood cells. Then, while in Finland to give a scientific presentation, he met a clinician who happened to be studying an extended family with many members having high red blood cell counts.

One of them was Eero Mäntyranta, a famous Finnish athlete who won a dozen or so Olympic and world championship medals in cross-country skiing in the 1960s. Longmore's genetic discovery intrigued the clinician and a geneticist at the University of Helsinki, Finland, who decided they should look at the same gene in the skier and his kin...

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Kharasch named vice chancellor for research

Evan D. Kharasch, MD, PhD, the Russell D. and Mary B. Shelden Professor of Anesthesiology and professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, has been appointed vice chancellor for research at Washington University in St. Louis, effective April 5. He had served as interim vice chancellor since July 2009.

Washington University Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton made the announcement.

“I want to thank Ed Macias and the search committee, chaired by Professor Deanna Barch, for their efforts," Wrighton says. “After several months of outstanding work in an interim role, we are pleased that Evan Kharasch has accepted this position permanently and know that he will serve and lead with distinction.”

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DBBS Associate Dean for Graduate Education, John Russell's Research Appears in the October issue of the Journal of Experimental Medicine

Click here to read Dr. Russell's Article in JEM