A view of snowy Mount Erebus in Antarctica. (Photo- Jared May)

Back to Antarctica with SPIDER

Johanna Nagy, an assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, arrived in Antarctica a few weeks ago to help her team prepare for their upcoming launch. Balloon-borne experiments like hers have helped scientists answer important questions about the universe, Earth’s atmosphere, the sun and the space environment. Scientific […]

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Faculty research initiatives supported through seed grants

CALL FOR PROPOSALS The McDonnell International Scholars Academy announces the second cycle of its Global Incubator Seed Grants Initiative. Our goal is to stimulate high-impact research projects in any discipline linking WashU faculty and international collaborators.  Proposals should include at least one international collaborator, with preference given to projects involving faculty from McDonnell Academy partner […]

WashU rising to meet great sustainability challenge

Will the next generation have the experience to keep up with climate change? Through opportunities like recently developed experiential learning and a new environmental analysis major at WashU, college students are primed to help the rest of us understand the hard questions that we face in the 21st century — as well as the answers that […]

Scientists at WashU complete first seismic study of Patagonian Andes

Scientists at Washington University in St. Louis, led by seismologist Douglas Wiens, the Robert S. Brookings Distinguished Professor in Arts & ­Sciences, recently completed one of the first seismic studies of the Patagonian Andes. In a new publication in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, they describe and map out local subsurface dynamics. The icefields that stretch for […]

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A tale of two forests could reveal path forward for saving endangered lemurs

To figure out how to best support these two endangered species — black-and-white ruffed lemurs and diademed sifakas — scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are joining up with researchers at the Saint Louis Zoo, Missouri Botanical Garden and Madagascar-based partners for an innovative research effort under the Living Earth Collaborative. Through the Eric P. […]

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Lots of water in the world’s most explosive volcano

A remote peninsula in northeastern Russia just across the Bering Sea from Alaska, Kamchatka has an impressive population of brown bears and the most explosive volcano in the world. Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, including Michael Krawczynski, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences and graduate student Andrea Goltz, brave the […]

New catalyst may lead to cheaper, longer-lasting power

A research team in the McKelvey School of Engineering is part of a multi-discipline, multi-institution group that is working to make hydrogen fuel cells a viable option in the quest for clean transportation.  The Washington University in St. Louis portion of the effort was led by Vijay Ramani, the Roma B. and Raymond H. Wittcoff Distinguished University […]

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International collaboration leads to breakthrough in metamaterials

A collaboration between Professor Guy Genin, the Harold and Kathleen Faught Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and Changqing Chen, professor in the School of Aerospace and director of Tsinghua University’s Institute of Solid Mechanics (ISM), has led to a breakthrough in the development of metamaterials that can be designed to […]

An eye toward better air quality in India

Poor air quality is a chronic and persistent problem in India. Recently, air quality in New Delhi reached levels so dangerous that schools closed, flights were canceled and a public health emergency was declared.  But thanks to a partnership between the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis and Indian Institute of […]

The “pristine myth” of climate change

Tristram R. “T.R.” Kidder, the Edward S. and Tedi Macias Professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences, has long studied the changes that humans have wrought on the land. In 2014, he published the earliest known archaeological evidence for human construction of large-scale levees and other flood-control systems in China — arguing that ancient levees […]

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