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December 2006
University News
UNIVERSITY GETS $156 MILLION FOR GENOME RESEARCH: The Genome Sequencing Center at the School of Medicine has been awarded a $156 million, four-year grant to use DNA sequencing to unlock the secrets of cancer and other human diseases. The grant is one of only three given by the National Human Genome Research Institute to U.S. sequencing centers.
 STUDENT, RECENT ALUMNUS NAMED RHODES SCHOLARS: Aaron F. Mertz, LA2006, and Leana S. Wen, a fourth- year medical student, have been named Rhodes Scholars, according to an announcement Nov. 18 by The Rhodes Trust. The two were among 32 U.S. students chosen from 896 nominees for graduate study at the University of Oxford in England.
FINANCIAL TIMES RANKS WUSTL-FUDAN EXECUTIVE MBA No. 1 IN CHINA, No. 8 IN WORLD: The Financial Times released its 2006 rankings of international Executive M.B.A. programs and the Washington University-Fudan University E.M.B.A. Program was ranked No. 8 in the world and first in mainland China. This first-time ranking for the joint educational venture between the Olin School of Business and Fudan University's School of Management by the Financial Times represents a significant step forward for both the program and its two partner schools.
NATIONALLY RECOGNIZED LEADER IN CANCER PREVENTION JOINS SITEMAN CANCER CENTER: Graham A. Colditz, M.D., Dr.P.H., has been named the Niess-Gain Professor and associate director of Prevention and Control at the Alvin J. Siteman Cancer Center at Washington University School of Medicine and Barnes-Jewish Hospital. Colditz, a newly elected member of the Institute of Medicine, had been at Harvard University for the past 23 years, where he was director of the Harvard Center for Cancer Prevention and leader of the Cancer Epidemiology Program at Dana Farber/Harvard Cancer Center.  NEW SOFTWARE HOLDS VARIETY OF FLEXIBILITY AND PROMISE: A new middleware - a special kind of software - developed by a group of scientists at Washington University is considered a major breakthrough in the field of wireless sensor networks and lays the foundation for rapidly developing applications.
GEOLOGISTS RESURRECT LEWIS AND CLARK RIVER DATA: A geologist at Washington University in St. Louis and his collaborator at Oxford University have interpreted data collected by Lewis and Clark collected during their famous expedition. They found that the Missouri River has markedly narrowed, and its water levels have become more variable over the past 200 years.
RESEARCHERS ZERO IN ON ORIGINS OF ALZHEIMER'S: Researchers have known since the early 20th century that a characteristic sign of Alzheimer’s disease is the presence of plaques made of a protein fragment called amyloid beta. One question obscuring scientists’ view of Alzheimer’s origins is: do patients brains make too much amyloid beta, or are they unable to clear it out quickly enough? A new test developed at the School of Medicine may finally help resolve this mystery. BUSINESS STUDENTS WORK OUT PLAN FOR BIOFUELS: While working on a practicum sponsored by the World Agricultural Forum, five students in the John M. Olin School of Business created a model for developing nations to use an indigenous plant to create biofuels. The team suggested that if organized correctly, villages could set up cooperatives to run and utilize a power unit run by oil created from the jatropha plant.
 MED STUDENTS PROVIDE FREE HEALTH CARE FOR INNER-CITY RESIDENTS: Instead of sleeping in, some School of Medicine students spend their Saturday mornings providing free health care to residents of the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood. Each Saturday, teams of students and one volunteer attending physician from the School of Medicine see walk-in patients at the Family Care Health Center.
2006 NOBEL PRIZE WINNER IN LITERATURE AWARDED FIRST DISTINGUISHED HUMANIST MEDAL: Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk, winner of the 2006 Nobel Prize in Literature, received the inaugural Distinguished Humanist Medal, an award given biannually by Washington University to a distinguished scholar, writer, or artist whose career merits special recognition for excellence and courage. The award is supported by The Center for the Humanities and the Office of International and Area Studies, both in Arts & Sciences.“It’s easy to say ‘never again,’ if the ‘never again’ is out there and not in here. People wanted to console themselves that this wasn’t just the way of the world, that some progress had been made. I think there is a case to be made, a strong case, that it was psychologically necessary to say ‘never again,’ even if it was a falsification...but... ‘Never again’ just means that never again will Germans kills Jews in Europe in the 1940s.”
—David Rieff, journalist and author of numerous essays and books including, A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis, during the annual Holocaust Memorial Lecture of the Assembly SeriesKathryn Davis, the Fannie M. Hurst Senior Fiction Writer in The Writing Program in Arts & Sciences, has won a $150,000 Lannan Foundation Literary Award.
MeghanMarie Fowler-Finn, a senior in Arts & Sciences from Medford, Massachusetts, has been named the NCAA Division III national soccer player of the year by D3kicks.com.
David Holtzman, M.D., the Andrew B. and Gretchen P. Jones Professor and head of the Department of Neurology; Randall Bateman, M.D., assistant professor of neurology; and John Cirrito, Ph.D., a postdoctoral research associate in neurology and psychiatry, have been named to the 2006 Scientific American 50, an honorary list of the year's "prime movers."
Enola K. Proctor, Ph.D., the Frank J. Bruno Professor of Social Work Research and associate dean for research at the George Warren Brown School of Social Work, has been appointed to a four-year term on the National Advisory Mental Health Council of the National Institutes of Health.
Robert W. Sussman, Ph.D., professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has been awarded the 2006 W.W. Howells Book Prize from the American Anthropological Association for best book in biological anthropology written for a wide audience.
Cynthia White, director of the research office at Washington University in St. Louis, has been selected to receive The National Council of University Research Administrators 2006 Distinguished Service Award.
The Washington University Bears Volleyball team lost only twice in 40 matches during the 2006 season. Unfortunately, one of the losses was the final match of the 2006 NCAA Division III National Volleyball Championships in Salem, Virginia, on November 18. The Bears lost 3-2 (30-27, 20-30, 22-30, 30-27, 15-10) to Juniata College of Huntingdon, Pennsylvania.
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Copyright 2006, Washington University in St. Louis
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