Washington University in St. Louis is committed to providing an inclusive and equitable environment for its faculty, students and staff. A key recommendation of the university’s Commission on Diversity and Inclusion was the creation of an academy to serve as the primary forum to create culture and climate change on campus, as well as to provide diversity and inclusion resources to staff and faculty.

That vision was realized at the start of the 2019-2020 academic year, when the Academy for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion launched with a full staff. On Sept. 20, it held an event to celebrate its initial engagements and to look ahead to the work that remains to be done.

“When it comes to our current context, we know that we still have work to do as we struggle with segregation; bias and discrimination; education, economic and health disparities; feelings of isolation; and more,” Chancellor Andrew D. Martin said at the event. “I’m confident the academy will play a significant role in helping us address some of these and other existing challenges as we consider where we go from here.”

Like the Center for Diversity and Inclusion, which serves students, the academy supports employees through programming, training, events and other resources. Additionally, it partners with existing offices, initiatives and entities across the university that also are engaged in the space, serving as a catalyst for this important work institutionwide. During the event, the academy released its orientation document, which explains how it was formed and how it works in tandem with other university resources.

“We’re here to be there to help understand why efforts might not work as planned, and how to tweak and try them again,” said Nicole Hudson, assistant vice chancellor of the Academy for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. “We are here to partner with our units and departments to co-create and develop together solutions to some of their greatest challenges.”

The academy also recently launched the “In St. Louis” documentary project, in partnership with the Office of Public Affairs. It’s an annual project designed to engage and explore what is means to live in St. Louis, viewed through the lens of equity and inclusion.

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As our electronic devices get more sophisticated, they also generate more heat that must be released for maximum performance. Damena Agonafer, a mechanical engineer and materials scientist in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is perfecting a way to dissipate the heat through a unique process involving tiny liquid drops on top of an array of micropillars.

In new research published on the cover of the journal Langmuir Sept. 17, Agonafer, assistant professor of mechanical engineering & materials science, worked with droplets of different liquids on micropillar structures of different shapes: triangles, squares and circles. The drops on the tops of the micropillars are similar to when a glass of water is overfilled just enough to make a hemispheric shape, or a meniscus, on the top of the glass before one more drop causes it to spill over.

Agonafer’s micropillar structures hold droplets of liquid with their sharp edges that form an energy barrier on the surface that keeps the liquid from spilling over. Some liquids, such as water, create high surface tension and create maximum pressure when the contact line is pinned on the edge of the inner pore of the micropillar. Other liquids, such as isopropyl alcohol or refrigerant, create low surface tension and create maximum pressure when the contact line is pinned on the outer edge of the structure.

Agonafer found that the shape of the micropillar made a difference in the amount of liquid it held before the droplets spilled over. The work, the first to study liquid retention on asymmetric pillar structures, provides insight into design of surface micro- and nanoengineered structures in science and engineering.

“We want the droplet to stay in place on top of the micropillar because it aids with the cooling process,” Agonafer said. “The asymmetric shape enhances the heat transfer. The meniscus is where the highest evaporative heat transfer occurs, so we wanted to try to increase that region.”

Previously, Agonafer developed a membrane with circular microscopic pillars designed to dissipate the heat in electronic devices. He based the membrane on the water-repellent skin of the springtail, an ancient insect that can breathe through its skin even under water. It was the first work to use low-surface-tension liquid within porous membrane structures.

In the new research, Agonafer and his team found that a droplet pinned on a triangular micropillar took the least amount of liquid before it spilled over, known as critical burst volume. When they used the high surface-tension liquids isopropyl alcohol and dielectric liquid, changing the shape of the micropillar from circular to triangular led to an 83% and 76% reduction in critical burst volume, respectively.

Ultimately, he found that the circular micropillar had a more uniform buildup of liquid volume than the triangular and square micropillars.

“The retention of liquids on the asymmetric pillar structures had very different characteristics than the cylindrical pillar,” he said. “The liquid meniscus may not necessarily wet the entire top of the surface of the asymmetrical micropillar, creating a significant challenge for analyzing the equilibrium profile.”

Agonafer and his lab are now working to optimize the shape and the pattern of the micropillars on an array toward developing an evaporative heat exchange device.

The McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis focuses intellectual efforts through a new convergence paradigm and builds on strengths, particularly as applied to medicine and health, energy and environment, entrepreneurship and security. With 99 tenured/tenure-track and 38 additional full-time faculty, 1,361 undergraduate students, 1,291 graduate students and 21,000 alumni, we are working to leverage our partnerships with academic and industry partners — across disciplines and across the world — to contribute to solving the greatest global challenges of the 21st century.

Ma B, Shan L, Dogruoz B, Agonafer D. Evolution of Microdroplet Morphology Confined on Asymmetric Micropillar Structures. Langmuir 2019, 35, 12264-12275. DOI: 10.1021/acs.langmuir.9b01410

Funding for this research was provided by Cisco Systems.

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“I’ve been thinking about momentum.”

So said Paul Tran, a senior poetry fellow in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. This summer, Chancellor Andrew D. Martin invited Tran, a celebrated young poet, to compose and deliver a new work on the theme of momentum for Martin’s formal inauguration Thursday, Oct. 3.

“Momentum is not about going fast in any which direction,” Tran observed. “It’s about protecting a sense of self in the face of everything that would feel threatened if we succeed in being what we are and doing what we are charged to do.

“My family came to the U.S. as refugees in 1989,” Tran added. “My mother raised me as a single parent working three jobs. Somehow, despite the odds stacked against us, I was first in my family to graduate high school and college. And none of that would have been possible without an inner sense of momentum.

“How can we — as individuals, as friends, as a community and families, and ultimately as an institution — nourish, fortify, protect and amplify for one another a momentum that will render us unstoppable?”

Fox in the Field

Tran’s poem is among several projects through which Washington University artists and designers will contribute to the inauguration ceremony and related events.

More than a dozen illustrators, photographers, graphic designers and copy editors from the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ new MFA in Illustration and Visual Culture program as well as the undergraduate Communication Design program will provide on-site reportage throughout the day. In preparation, the group — collectively known as Fox in the Field — is already fanning out across campus and St. Louis, sketchbooks and iPads in hand.

“If you haven’t drawn on location before, you kind of have to get into shape,” said D.B. Dowd, professor of art, who coordinated similar reportage of the 2016 presidential debate and the university’s first Day of Discovery and Dialogue. “The complexity of the world can be overwhelming. What do I decide to show? How do I establish a hierarchy of information? That takes practice.

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During the debate Artist: @susanhaejinlee #WashuDebate2016 #DebateDiary

A post shared by Sam Fox School at WashU (@samfoxschool) on Oct 9, 2016 at 8:28pm PDT

“But it’s also a great learning opportunity,” Dowd added. He pointed out that Fox in the Field will present their work on the Sam Fox School’s Instagram account and build slideshows for various campus locations. “It teaches you to work in teams, to work under pressure, and to work within time constraints.”

For artists, “the temptation can be to make some really polished, finished thing,” Dowd said. “But the point here is to work quickly, to keep things fresh and respond to what you see in real time.

“That’s what’s compelling for an audience.”

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Sweeping views. An expansive park. And a killer turkey wrap.

These are just a few of highlights of the of the newly completed east end project, Washington University in St. Louis’ largest capital project in recent history. The newly completed east end encompasses 18 acres of the Danforth Campus, adds five new buildings, expands the university’s world-class Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, moves hundreds of surface parking spaces underground and creates a new park where students can meet, relax and celebrate. Here, we offer a list of must-see attractions.

Parkside Cafe at the Schnuck Pavilion

Bon Appetit chef Hayes Green knows a lot is riding on his Parkside Cafe pork steak.

Yes, it must satisfy his regular clientele of students, staff and faculty. But the dish and other St. Louis favorites also must wow visiting prospective families.

“This may be their first meal in St. Louis, so we want to show off the city’s unique culinary traditions and the best of our local farmers and producers,” Hayes said. “The Parkside menu will always be changing to deliver the best St. Louis has to offer.”

In addition to the local tomato salad with Marcoot Jersey Creamery burrata, toasted ravioli and grass-fed burger, Parkside will offer a daily wrap prepared by Arthur Curtis and Robert Scott, beloved cooks who served thousands of sandwiches during their long tenure at the Holmes Lounge Carvery.

“We knew we would be shut down if we didn’t find a way to bring Holmes here to Parkside,” Green said with a laugh. “Their wraps are WashU.”

‘Senat’ chairs in the Ann and Andrew Tisch Park

Colorful, iconic and weighing little more than a magnum of champagne, the “Senat” chairs of the Ann and Andrew Tisch Park are quintessentially French in both style and spirit.

“Senat chairs were originally designed and produced by the parks department in Paris in the 1920s,” said Jeff Morrisey, a project manager for campus planning and capital projects. “Lightweight and intentionally movable, they are most famously used — in a typically French, nonchalant way — in the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris.”

East end designers wanted to create a similar vibe in the expansive Tisch Park.

“The chairs help activate the open space and ‘wander’ about the central green and fountain court, being used for everything from lounging with friends during downtime and eating lunch to being gathered up and grouped for classes.”

View of Brookings Hall from the Bluedorn Family Presentation Room in the Gary M. Sumers Welcome Center 

Come for the WashU pins, stay for the stunning views of Brookings Hall.

“The view of Brookings was part of the concept for the Welcome Center since Day One,” said Jamie Kolker, university architect and associate vice chancellor. “When you’re here, you don’t feel like you’re in a building; you feel like you’re in the campus.” 

Welcome Court 

In 2017, a team of landscape architecture students and faculty in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts documented a single dying east end pin oak for their award-winning One Tree Project. Soon, a section of that tree will have new life in the sunken Welcome Court, which will connect the parking garage to the Welcome Center and features a meandering path and native plantings. As it decays, the “nurse log” will provide support, shade and nutrients to other plants.

Exterior of the Kemper Art Museum

Delicately polished and highly reflective, the stainless steel exterior of the Kemper Art Museum is, itself, a work of art.

“It changes depending on your perspective,” Kolker said. “Walk 10 feet to the left and you see a totally different facade. The sky and clouds also will affect the way it looks. It’s pretty amazing.”

East End Parking Facility

Why are the ceilings in the new garage so high? Because one day, when we no longer need cars to commute, the East End Parking Facility will be converted into labs and classrooms. But for now, drivers enjoy the benefit of a garage that is surprisingly pleasant.

“Each place where you emerge, whether it’s a stairwell or an elevator or a court, has natural light and glimpses of the sky,” Kolker said. “The idea is to be directed to what brings you to the surface.”

Kolker has noticed another, unexpected benefit to the high ceilings.

“A sort of community has developed,” Kolker said. “Usually when you’re in a dark, cavernous garage, you just want to get out. But because of the light, I’ve noticed people pausing and chatting. It’s a nice way to start or end your day.”

Florence Steinberg Weil Sculpture Garden

Created in 1964, “Five Rudders” is a signature work by renowned American sculptor Alexander Calder. Now, after undergoing extensive conservation — thanks to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) — this iconic modernist work has returned to campus as part of the Kemper Art Museum’s newly reinstalled Florence Steinberg Weil Sculpture Garden.

Designed by Michael Vergason Landscape Architects, the sculpture garden is located on the south side of Ann and Andrew Tisch Park and serves as a visual and symbolic connection between the museum and Anabeth and John Weil Hall, which houses studios, classrooms and fabrication spaces for the Sam Fox School.

In addition to “Five Rudders,” the sculpture garden includes five historic bronzes (also conserved as part of the IMLS grant): Auguste Rodin’s “The Shade” (1880), Pierre-Auguest Renoir’s “La laveuse (Washerwoman)” (1917), Aristide Maillol’s “Monument à Debussy” (1930) and Jacques Lipchitz’s “Mother and Child” (1949). Other works include Dan Peterman’s geometric “Accessories to an Event” (2006), built from reprocessed, postconsumer plastic, and “Bisected Circle,” a new work by conceptual artist Dan Graham.

Green Wall at Kuehner Court

Colors and textures swirl like paint strokes. More than 5,000 plants — from Kangaroo Paw Fern and chlorophytum “Ocean” to arboricola “mini green” and philodendron cordatum — form a literal wall of green that rises 30 feet in the air.

Welcome to the Kuehner Court, located in the Sam Fox School’s Weil Hall. With its clean lines, high ceilings and abundant natural light, the court is a welcoming spot for students and faculty to meet, study, relax and recharge.

“I was inspired by the geography of St. Louis,” said Nathan Beckner, lead plant designer at Sagegreenlife, which developed the green wall in collaboration with architecture firm KieranTimberlake. “The Mississippi and Missouri are such iconic rivers. I wanted to incorporate that river patterning as well as a sense of topography and narrative.”

Tomás Saraceno installation in Kemper Art Museum lobby

In 2011, the Kemper Art Museum presented “Cloud Specific,” an early museum show for acclaimed Argentine artist Tomás Saraceno. This fall, Saraceno returns to campus with “Cosmic Filaments,” an iridescent new work commissioned for the museum’s expanded north foyer.

Suspended overhead on a network of thin black polyester rope, this spectacular, gravity-defying piece alternately suggests bubbles, molecules, spider webs, neuronal channels and other natural phenomena.  Viewed from both inside and outside the 32-foot-tall glass curtain wall, Saraceno’s work activates the interior of the museum while creating a dynamic visual juxtaposition with the Tisch Park and the open sky above.

Spartan Light Metal Products Makerspace in Jubel Hall

The Spartan Light Metal Products Makerspace is located inside Jubel Hall, the new home of the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science at the McKelvey School of Engineering, and features multiple 3D printers, a laser cutter, band saw, drill press, soldering equipment and others tools and is staffed by technicians who offer safety and equipment training.

“When we say this space is for the whole campus, we mean it,” said Ruth Okamoto, director of Spartan Makerspace. “Anyone — students, faculty and staff — can be a member. Our hope is that people will walk by and get excited about making stuff.”

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Hurricane Dorian is the latest example of a frightening trend. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent, more severe and more widespread as a consequence of climate change. Research from Washington University in St. Louis provides important insights into how different species may fare under this new normal.

Faced with unprecedented change, animals and plants are scrambling to catch up — with mixed results. A new model developed by Carlos Botero, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences, and Thomas Haaland, formerly a graduate student at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, helps to predict the types of changes that could drive a given species to extinction.

The study, published Sept. 27 in the journal Ecology and Evolution, challenges the idea that species previously exposed to more variable conditions are more likely to survive extreme events.

“It is difficult to predict how organisms will respond to changes in extreme events because these events tend to be, by definition, quite rare,” Botero said. “But we can have a pretty good idea of how any given species may respond to current changes in this aspect of climate — if we pay attention to its natural history, and have some idea of the climatic regime it has experienced in the past.”

Unexpected vulnerabilities

Researchers in the Botero laboratory use a variety of tools from ecology and evolutionary biology to explore how life — from bacteria to humans — copes with and adapts to repeated environmental change.

For the new study, Botero worked with his former student Haaland, now a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Zurich in Switzerland, to develop an evolutionary model of how populations respond to rare environmental extremes. (Think: 500-year floods.) These rare events can be tricky for evolution because it is difficult to adapt to hazards that are almost never encountered.

Through computer simulations, Haaland and Botero found that certain traits and experiences emerged as key indicators of vulnerability.

Specifically, they found:

• Species that breed a single time in their lifetime tend to evolve conservative behaviors or morphologies, as if they were expecting to experience an environmental extreme every time.
• In contrast, species in which a single individual can reproduce multiple times and in different contexts (say, a bird that nests several times in a season and in different trees), evolution favors behaving as if environmental extremes simply never happen.

The key insight of this new model is that species belonging to the former, “conservative” category can easily adapt to more frequent or widespread extremes but have trouble adjusting when those extremes become more intense. The opposite is true of species in the latter, “care-free” category.

Haaland and Botero also found that factors speeding up trait evolution are generally likely to hinder — rather than favor — adaptation to rare selection events. Part of the reason: High mutation rates tend to facilitate the process of adaptation to normal conditions during the long intervals in between environmental extremes.

“Our results challenge the idea that species that have been historically exposed to more variable environments are better suited to cope with climate change,” Botero said.

“We see that simple changes in the pattern and intensity of environmental extremes could be lethal even for populations that have experienced similar events in the past. This model simply helps us better understand when and where we may have a problem.”

Applicable to many environmental extremes

The simple framework that Haaland and Botero describe can be applied to any kind of environmental extreme including flooding, wildfires, heatwaves, droughts, cold spells, tornadoes and hurricanes — any and all of which might be considered part of the “new normal” under climate change.

Take extreme heat as an example. The model can be used to predict what will happen to animal or plant species when there are more heat waves, when heatwaves last longer, or when typical heat waves affect larger areas.

“Regions in which heat waves used to be rare and patchy are likely to host primarily species that do not exhibit conspicuous adaptations to extreme heat,” Botero said. “Our model indicates that the biggest threats of extinction in these particular locations will therefore be more frequent or widespread heat waves, and that the species of highest concern in these places will be endemics and species with small geographic distribution.

“Conversely, areas in which heat waves were historically common and widespread can be expected to host species that already exhibit adaptations for extreme heat,” Botero added. “In this case, our model suggests that the typical inhabitants of these places are likely to be more vulnerable to hotter temperatures than to longer or more widespread heat waves.”

Informing conservation actions

The new model gives wildlife managers and conservation organizations insight into the potential vulnerabilities of different species based on relatively simple assessments of their natural histories and historical environments.

For example, a 2018 study by Colin Donihue, visiting postdoctoral fellow at Washington University, found that Anolis lizards in the Caribbean tend to evolve larger toepads and shorter limb lengths in response to hurricanes because these traits help them cling better to branches during strong winds. The new model suggests that while these lizards are unlikely to be affected by more frequent hurricanes, their populations may nevertheless face a significant threat of extinction if future hurricanes become more intense. A possible solution to this problem might be to provide wind refuges across the island to allow parts of the population escape winds of very high intensity, Botero suggested.

“While this simple conservation action is unlikely to completely shift the balance from a ‘conservative’ to a ‘care-free’ evolutionary response to extreme events, it may nevertheless reduce the strongest vulnerability of these ‘conservative’ lizard populations,” Botero said. “It might just buy them enough time to accumulate sufficient evolutionary changes in their toes and limbs to meet the new demands of their altered habitat.”

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Collagen is the most abundant protein in mammals, making up skin, bone, tendons and other soft tissues. Its fibrous nature helps cells to move throughout the body, but until now, it wasn’t clear how the length of fibers influences how cells move in groups.

Amit Pathak, a mechanical engineer in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, and his team found that collagen fiber length within the body may be a key overlooked parameter that some normal cells use to become invasive. The results of their research were published Sept. 26 in the Journal of Cell Science.

Cells move around to form organs during development, to heal wounds, and when they metastasize from cancerous tumors. Typically, cell movement slows in a soft environment, similar to getting stuck in mud, and speeds up in a stiff environment, similar to a ball rolling across a waxed floor.

When preparing to experiment with cells moving in collagen, Pathak, who specializes in mechanobiology, and his team found that existing substrates didn’t have the ability to support fiber formation. The team made new hydrogels with more realistic fiber structure and that allowed them to change the length of the fibers more easily. As they got to work, the results were unexpected.

“The first surprising thing we saw was that some groups of cells made an escape from their colony in the form of narrow streams, holding on to each other,” Pathak said. “We expected that the cells would migrate faster in this new stiff substrate, then move out of their colony more, as we see in the body. We saw some of that, but even in soft substrates where the movement was supposed to be slow, the movement was fast. They were streaming out of the colony more efficiently than on a stiff substrate.”

The team then looked further and found that the longer collagen fibers on soft material helped cells move out of the colony while also elongating the cells, which supported their collective migration.

“We have this collective motion while at the same time the collagen fiber length is elongating them enough to help this streaming,” Pathak said. “If we take away the fiber length, they don’t elongate or migrate. On the other hand, if you make the substrate stiffer, that breaks this delicate balance by making them so aggressive that the cooperativity goes away.”

Researchers have thought that a very stiff cancerous tumor would become invasive. However, Pathak’s team found that if the collagen fiber structure is just right, then even a soft tumor might become invasive.

“We found this nice balance in that the cells have to have some aggressiveness to move out, and at the same time, they must remain cooperative,” Pathak said. “Otherwise, without either aggressive motion or cooperation, the collective streaming would fall apart.”

Pathak has applied for a patent on the technology with the university’s Office of Technology Management.

The McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis focuses intellectual efforts through a new convergence paradigm and builds on strengths, particularly as applied to medicine and health, energy and environment, entrepreneurship and security. With 99 tenured/tenure-track and 38 additional full-time faculty, 1,361 undergraduate students, 1,291 graduate students and 21,000 alumni, we are working to leverage our partnerships with academic and industry partners — across disciplines and across the world — to contribute to solving the greatest global challenges of the 21st century.

Sarker B, Bagchi A, Walter C, Almeida J, Pathak A. “Longer collagen fibers trigger multicellular streaming on soft substrates via enhanced forces and cell-cell cooperation.” Journal of Cell Science, 2019 132: jcs226753 doi: 10.1242/jcs.226753.

This research was funded by the National Institutes of Health (1R35GM128764-01).

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It’s finally here: The daylong celebration of the inauguration of Andrew D. Martin as chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis is tomorrow, Oct. 3.

Martin is the 15th chancellor in Washington University’s 166-year history, and it’s the ninth time formal inauguration proceedings have been held on campus. With all its pomp and ceremony, an inauguration is a time-honored academic tradition and a chance to celebrate our past, present and future.

With the theme of “Momentum,” Martin will accept his charge of office in an inaugural address that outlines his priorities and vision for the university. The address will be delivered as part of the installation ceremony that begins at 3 p.m., with an academic procession into Brookings Quadrangle.

The ceremony is open to the entire community and will include delegates from universities across the country and around the world, along with chancellors emeriti William H. Danforth and Mark S. Wrighton; members of the Board of Trustees; faculty marshals; and representatives from the student body, staff and alumni, all in academic regalia.

The ceremony will be broadcast live online beginning with a pre-ceremony program at 1:30 p.m., hosted by faculty members Adrienne D. Davis, vice provost, the William M. Van Cleve Professor of Law and founding director of the new Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity; and Todd Decker, the Paul Tietjens Professor of Music and chair of the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences.

After a welcome by John Drobak, the George Alexander Madill Professor of Real Property & Equity Jurisprudence at Washington University School of Law and grand marshal of the procession, Andrew E. Newman, chair of the Washington University Board of Trustees, will make opening remarks.

Greetings from representatives of the faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, staff and alumni will make up the next part of the program. Then Paul Tran, MFA ’19, a former Chancellor’s Graduate Fellow of The Writing Program, will read an inaugural poem they wrote especially for the occasion. The Washington University Concert and Chamber Choirs, under the direction of Nicole Aldrich, and the Washington University Wind Ensemble will provide music.

After Martin is presented with the chancellor’s medallion and the ceremonial university charter, he will be officially installed by Newman. Following Martin’s address and acceptance of office, everyone will join in the singing of the alma mater and the delegates and distinguished guests will proceed to a reception on the John M. Olin Library lawn at 4:30 p.m., an event also open to the entire community.

Still have questions? Here are some answers:

Sounds a lot like a Commencement. How will it be different? It will look a lot like a Commencement — but without the diplomas, outside speaker and parade of graduation candidates. The academic nature of an inauguration is by design, and is a time-honored higher education tradition. An inauguration reaffirms the university’s mission and its place in the community and the world and is a cause for great celebration and affirmation of who we are as a community.

How will inauguration day affect parking on campus? A heavy volume of visitors is expected on campus for the east end dedication today, Oct. 2, and tomorrow, Oct. 3. Regular daily campus parking will be impacted. Parking & Transportation is providing a shuttle service and has laid out a detailed plan for the day.

What’s a delegate? A delegate is a representative from an institution of higher learning, and there will be more than 70 of them participating in the installation ceremony from around the world. They will line up in order of their charter, led by Harvard University, which was chartered in 1636, all the way up to Missouri Baptist University, which received its charter in 1964.

What’s the significance of the symbols of office? The chancellor’s medallion symbolizes the office and is worn on formal university occasions such as Commencement. It was originally designed in 1946 by Louise C. Richter, a faculty member in the School of Fine Arts, along with Neomi M. Walsh and Mary L. Lischer, for Arthur Holly Compton’s inauguration. It’s a three-inch disk embossed with symbols of the university seal and a chain of alternating gold and silver links.

The ceremonial university charter features text from the 1853 and 1857 original charters and an original woodcut of Brookings Hall. It was designed by D.B. Dowd, professor of art and of American culture studies, and former faculty member Sarah Spurr.

Any other inauguration activities going on? The day kicks off with the Inauguration Symposium from 8:30 a.m.-11:30 a.m. in Emerson Auditorium in Knight Hall. Here’s the lineup of faculty speakers, along with a link to view the event remotely. The newly expanded Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum will be open to visitors as well from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. There, you can see the special exhibition “Ai Weiwei: Bare Life,” featuring more than 35 artworks by the renowned Chinese artist and human rights activist. And following the ceremony, from 4:30-5:30 p.m., the new east end will be available to tour as well, with guides stationed throughout Ann and Andrew Tisch Park and in each of the new buildings to share insights and information.

Will I be able to access Olin Library? The upper and lower levels of Olin Library will be available all day for quiet study, but there is going to be a hub of activity Oct. 3 with the afternoon reception on the lawn and the chancellor’s inauguration exhibition, “Momentum: Bridging Past, Present, and Future,” in the main lobby. The Olin Library website has more detailed information.

Not to be a killjoy, but what if it rains? We’ve got a plan for that, too. Even if there’s a little rain, Brookings Quadrangle will be ready. In the slight chance that it storms, the festivities will move to the Field House in the Athletic Complex, with the reception immediately following in the varsity gym.

Where can I get more information? The livestream and latest, up-to-date information will be available at inauguration.wustl.edu.

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As a fashion design major in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, senior Meredith Liu has studied and created a wide variety of garments. But in recent months, Liu turned her sights to a new challenge, designing two custom tams (the distinctive head covering typically seen as part of academic regalia) for Chancellor Andrew D. Martin.

The first design boasts a classic tartan plaid, based on university colors. “I played with thread counts until I found a plaid that was the most visually pleasing and compositionally balanced,” Liu said. “The warp and weft threads alter the appearance of the vertical and horizontal lines, and the areas where they overlap create a visual blend.”

The second features a series of light-hearted, St. Louis-centric doodles: the Gateway Arch, Brookings Hall, the Old Courthouse (now Jefferson National Expansion Memorial Park) and more. “I decided to include hand-drawn illustrations of some of Chancellor Martin’s favorite things,” Liu said. “It was just fun to create.”

Taken together, “I think the tams speak to the dual sides of the WashU atmosphere,” Liu added. “Professional and hardworking as well as quirky and idiosyncratic.”

Construction of both tams was led by associate professor Mary Ruppert-Stroescu, head of the fashion design program. First, she adapted Liu’s fabric designs to fit the tams’ specific shape, ensuring that the prints were highlighted whether seen from above or straight-on. Ruppert-Stroescu then printed the designs onto silk fabric; drafted a pattern, based on the chancellor’s existing tam; and assembled the final garment.

“Within the canons of academia, it’s rare that we get a chance to express personality and heritage,” Ruppert-Stroescu said. “But tams for doctoral level regalia do show a bit more leeway.

“The task was rather daunting, but Meredith is a very talented artist and fashion designer,” Ruppert-Stroescu added. “We tried to keep a balance of tradition and fun.”

As for which tam Chancellor Martin will choose… Tune in Thursday afternoon!

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A sweeping campus planning, design and construction project has transformed the Danforth Campus of Washington University in St. Louis two years after the start of construction. The largest capital project in the university’s recent history, the East End Transformation project was officially dedicated Oct. 2. It encompasses 18 acres of the Danforth Campus, adds five new buildings, expands the university’s world-class Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, relocates hundreds of surface parking spaces underground, and creates an expansive new park.

The reimagined landscape builds on the original 1895 campus plan by Olmsted, Olmsted & Eliot, while at the same time being forward-focused. Nearly six acres of surface parking lots have been converted to green space, furthering the university’s commitment to sustainability. The underground parking garage is designed to be converted into classrooms and labs, a plan that foresees a future less dependent on automobiles. Walking paths connect academic buildings in different schools, making interdisciplinary collaboration easier.

“Not only is the east end a breathtaking and sustainable extension of the Danforth Campus; its intentional design, architecture and proximity to Forest Park signify our openness and accessibility to the wider community as well as our commitment to collaboration across departments and disciplines,” Chancellor Andrew D. Martin said. “With careful attention to these details, this transformation allows us to further our mission to pursue distinction in education and research and to be an even stronger neighbor and partner as we open our doors to the St. Louis region even wider.”

Major components of the project are:

The Ann and Andrew Tisch Park, which serves as a welcoming entrance to campus and is a gathering place for the university community and visitors alike.

The Gary M. Sumers Welcome Center, which provides a clearly designated starting point for campus visitors and houses the Office of Undergraduate Admissions and Student Financial Services.

Craig and Nancy Schnuck Pavilion, which houses the Parkside Café, the Environmental Studies program and the Office of Sustainability. It also supports pedestrian and bicycle commuters with shower facilities, lockers and bicycle parking.

The underground garage, which serves the Danforth Campus and opens to the outdoors, offering views of both the sky and landscaped gardens.

Henry A. and Elvira H. Jubel Hall, which houses the Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science in the McKelvey School of Engineering.

James M. McKelvey, Sr. Hall, which will be completed in 2020 and open in 2021 and will house the McKelvey School of Engineering’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering.

Anabeth and John Weil Hall, which is the new main entry to the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. It houses graduate art and architecture studios, classrooms and a digital fabrication studio.

The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum expansion includes a new 34-foot-tall polished stainless steel facade, a new entrance foyer and additional exhibition space. The relocated Florence Steinberg Weil Sculpture Garden integrates the museum’s prominent collection of outdoor sculpture, including works by Auguste Rodin and Alexander Calder, into the expanded green space of the east end.

“This project was truly a unique opportunity to honor our physical heritage and lay the foundation for our future,” said Henry S. Webber, the university’s executive vice chancellor and chief administrative officer. “These world-class facilities will support world-class teaching and research and the everyday activities of  our faculty, students, staff and guests for many years. I want to commend the project team at the university, our contractors and our design teams on a job very well done.”

Sustainability is central to the $360 million project: All of the new buildings have been designed to achieve LEED Gold certification; several are on track to exceed those standards. Resource conservation measures include solar arrays to generate electricity and heat recovery chillers to harvest waste heat and minimize heat island effect. Other sustainable features include a bioretention rain garden and native plantings; an expansive indoor green wall in Weil Hall; and the Active Commuter Hub, which includes shower facilities for those opting to bike or walk to work.

The East End Transformation took efficiency underground. Nearly 6 acres of surface parking have been replaced by an underground garage featuring 790 spaces and a projected lifespan of more than 100 years. The facility was designed to be easily convertible to lab and classroom space as needs shift. The facility, which also includes electric charging stations, is on track to receive certification from Parksmart, the world’s only rating system designed to advance sustainable mobility through smarter parking design. The garage is projected to become the first Parksmart-certified structure in the St. Louis region.

The project’s design also promotes openness and collaboration, creating physical connections between the Sam Fox School and the McKelvey School of Engineering. Jubel Hall features the Spartan Light Metal Products Makerspace. Located on the first floor, the Makerspace is open to all Washington University students, faculty and staff regardless of their research or study focus. Its state-of-the-art resources include 3D printers and scanners, plasma cutters, computer-controlled milling machines and lathes for metal cutting. These tools can be used to create everything from high-tech products and biomedical devices to sculptures and architectural plans.

Similarly, the Caleres Fabrication Studio, located in Weil Hall, also is open to students and faculty. It is outfitted with digital tools and specialized equipment, including a CNC mill and laser cutters used to create architectural models and innovative design projects, as well as to explore new sculptural forms of art.

Connectedness with the city and community is achieved with a reimagined entrance to campus across the street from Forest Park, long considered one of the best urban public parks in the nation. The Tisch Park creates new outdoor programming opportunities for Washington University and welcomes the St. Louis community from the northwestern edge of Forest Park. The Kemper Art Museum expansion also creates new opportunities for community engagement, with space for events and a more visible, welcoming presence.

“With this project, we took an area that was mostly a sea of asphalt parking lots and created a vital, vibrant expansion of the Danforth Campus that brilliantly meets the needs of our students, faculty and community,” said Board of Trustees Chair Andrew Newman, member of an ad hoc committee of current and former trustees that helped plan and guide the east end project to completion. “This could not have been accomplished without the vision of Chancellor Emeritus Mark Wrighton, support from many generous alumni and friends and the talent and hard work of our architects and construction team.”

Key partners on the East End Transformation include:

Landscape architect and planner

• Michael Vergason Landscape Architects

Planning and design firms

• KieranTimberlake (Weil Hall, Sumers Welcome Center, Schnuck Pavilion, Kemper Art Museum expansion)
• Mackey Mitchell (Jubel Hall)
• Moore Ruble Yudell (Jubel Hall)
• Perkins Eastman (McKelvey Hall)
• BNIM (east end parking garage)

Construction manager

• McCarthy Building Companies

The post East End Transformation dedicated appeared first on The Source.

Today, as he was inaugurated as Washington University in St. Louis’ 15th chancellor, Andrew D. Martin announced the WashU Pledge, a bold new financial aid program that will provide a free undergraduate education to incoming, full-time Missouri and southern Illinois students who are Pell Grant-eligible or from families with annual incomes of $75,000 or less.

The WashU Pledge covers the full cost of a Washington University education, including tuition, room, board and fees. 

“We are making this ‘WashU Pledge’ first because it’s the right thing to do,” Martin said. “In addition, we are Washington University ‘in St. Louis.’ That means we have a unique responsibility to provide opportunity for students in our extended region — to the four corners of Missouri and our neighbors in the southern portion of Illinois. By doing so, we’re attracting our very best and brightest and keeping them right here, close to home.”

See the accompanying map (right) for eligible counties.

The WashU Pledge reflects Martin’s commitment to advancing efforts to broaden educational access; improve diversity, equity and inclusion; and strengthen the university’s partnerships in St. Louis and across the region. In his inaugural address, Martin noted educational access as one of his three key strategic priorities for the future of the university.

To be eligible for the program, an applicant must be admitted to Washington University as a full-time first-year undergraduate student, reside in the designated area and fit within the financial criteria. Part-time students or students who are earning a degree from University College are not eligible.

During his inaugural address, titled “Momentum,” Martin also announced that for those undergraduate students already enrolled at WashU who would qualify, they, too, will benefit from this pledge beginning in fall 2020.

Martin noted that the WashU Pledge will not only enhance the accessibility and affordability of a Washington University undergraduate degree, but also will deliver economic benefits to the St. Louis region.

“Our hope and expectation is that these students will come to the university, have an exceptional experience and — then — post-graduation choose to stay in the region to work, start their own businesses, conduct important research or practice their craft,” Martin said. “This will boost the St. Louis regional economy and deepen our local talent pool.”

Ronné Patrick Turner, vice provost of admissions and financial aid, said the WashU Pledge will support another key area of focus at the university — academic distinction.  

“Our goal is to recruit the best and the brightest students regardless of their ability to pay,” Turner said. “The WashU Pledge will allow us to attract students throughout Missouri and southern Illinois who may have thought, in the past, that a WashU education wasn’t possible. This commitment removes any and all financial constraints and makes it clear that our doors are open to these students. We hope they will join us.”

Series of initiatives

The WashU Pledge is the latest in a series of initiatives to make Washington University more affordable. Earlier this year, Washington University launched startup and technology grant programs for students from families with annual incomes of $75,000 or less. The grants cover the cost of computers, books and other college necessities such as winter clothing and housing supplies. 

During the recently completed Leading Together capital campaign, Washington University raised $591 million for student scholarships and fellowships, substantially increasing resources for student financial aid.

The university has made substantial progress in attracting and enrolling Pell-eligible students, growing the number from 6% in 2013 to 15% in 2019. At the same time, the university has introduced a number of resources and programs to ensure these students succeed and have the full Washington University experience. New initiatives include: 

• The Student Success Fund, which covers the cost of travel to interviews, academic fees, and medical and living expenses incurred during an unpaid internship.
• Deneb STARS, a cohort program that provides community and support to Pell-eligible and first-generation students through academic and peer mentors.

“At Washington University, we are not just committed to getting students to college, we are committed to creating a culture where everyone thrives,” Martin said. “Our message is simple: ‘Every Washington University student belongs here and we all are committed to their success.’”

The post Newly inaugurated Washington University Chancellor Andrew D. Martin makes ‘WashU Pledge’ appeared first on The Source.

Andrew D. Martin delivered his inaugural address, “Momentum,” during his installation ceremony as the 15th chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis. The ceremony was held Thursday, Oct. 3, 2019, in Brookings Quadrangle.

The audience included faculty, students, staff and alumni; chancellors emeriti William H. Danforth and Mark S. Wrighton; members of the Board of Trustees; delegates from universities across the country and around the world; and local leaders in education, business and government. 

Below are Chancellor Martin’s prepared remarks:

Members of the Washington University community, distinguished guests and those joining us locally — good afternoon, and thank you for being with us today. Between the symposium this morning and all the other events happening on campus, it has been an incredible day as we celebrate the past, present and future of Washington University in St. Louis.

There are a lot of people I want to thank for helping us get to where we are today.  Many of you I hope to thank individually, however, I do want to especially thank members of the Chancellor’s Search Committee, the Board of Trustees, and the Inauguration Steering Committee. You have been exceptional this past year and a half as we’ve prepared for this transition and moment in the university’s history. I also want to thank our delegates for being here and for representing your institutions.

I’m incredibly honored to have been chosen to serve as WashU’s 15th Chancellor. Stephanie, Olive and I are extremely happy to have returned to St. Louis where we consider home. This is truly a culminating moment for my family and me both personally and professionally. But I also don’t want this day to be about me — because it’s really not.

Today is about Washington University. And it’s about momentum.

In my mind, the word momentum perfectly encapsulates where we’ve been, where we are, and where we’re heading.

Since I’m a “math guy,” I feel the need to add, that from a purely mathematical-physics perspective, momentum is the impetus or driving force of a moving object. To calculate momentum, you multiply an object’s mass by its velocity. The greater an object’s momentum, the more force it takes to change its motion.

Momentum also helps us continue to move forward. Given enough momentum, we can overcome significant obstacles. Unfortunately, though, we can’t really increase our momentum if we have nothing to drive on top of. Nothing to build upon. Nothing to hold us up.

That was especially true here in St. Louis in the mid-1800s when the Mississippi River served as one of the largest waterway obstacles to commercial and industrial progress in the country.

At that time, St. Louis was struggling. The river, which once provided easy passage for transporting goods cross-country, was no longer the fastest route. The railroad had taken its place and St. Louis was losing its economic prominence. Talk about a real momentum buzzkill!

To solve for this, our local business and political leaders decided to build a bridge. As former libraries staff member Aaron Welborn writes, “There was only one problem: no one had ever built a bridge that long.”

That didn’t stop James Buchanan Eads and the eventual construction of the Eads Bridge — an engineering and architectural marvel and the largest and longest bridge built during its time. The bridge also signified hope as the city of St. Louis looked to regain its momentum.

Perhaps some of you know, but Washington University also played a role in the building and historic preservation of the Eads Bridge.

In fact, our second chancellor, William Chauvenet, revised and double-checked the calculations Eads made in designing the bridge and invented a revolving mirror to measure the elastic limit of steel and iron. Faculty members often brought students to the site to study its engineering and architecture. In 1872, WashU bought the machinery that tested the bridge’s structural materials for use in our civil engineering laboratory. WashU Professor Calvin Woodward would later write the history of the Eads Bridge.

And the original drawings of the bridge’s designs have since been digitized and are housed in the Julian Edison Department of Special Collections in our University Libraries.

The story of the Eads Bridge is a story about momentum. It’s also a story about how our fine city and this institution came together to achieve something incredible. It’s a story about how we engendered innovation and progress across the community and across the disciplines.

I like to think Washington University is also a lot like the Eads Bridge.

At Washington University, we are a bridge between past, present and future. A bridge between the academy and the community. Between the liberal arts, the sciences and the professions. Between the work on our campuses and the work of our global partners.

Not only that, but we continue to build bridges. We build bridges between faculty, staff and students. Between doctors and patients. Between students and alumni. We intentionally build bridges across differences as we aspire to become a place that is both diverse and unapologetically committed to equity and inclusion — because we know full well that diversity on paper is one thing, and equity and inclusion are another.

We must build these bridges because it’s at the very core of our understanding of American higher education. It’s imperative for us to continue to move forward, even despite higher education’s public-facing challenges. While the national perception wanes, we must turn those challenges — not into threats — but into opportunities.

That means, when state governments divest from their great universities, it’s time for us to open our doors even wider.

When industries decrease investment in research and development, it’s time for us to step up our research game.

When our city no longer provides a public hospital, it’s time for us, BJC Healthcare and other partners in the region to help fill that void and ensure an even stronger safety net for anyone who needs care.

When resources are sparse in many K-12 schools, it’s time for us to step up and help address the leaky pipeline.

When tensions loom between the United States and other countries, it’s time to strengthen our position that we welcome all people to campus.

When racial tensions also loom right here in our own neighborhoods, and perhaps even within our community, it’s time for us to make it abundantly clear that we strive for equity and inclusion of all.

Simply put — we must use our firm foundation as a foothold for future momentum as we continue our mission to be a place of distinction in education, research and patient care. As your 15th chancellor, I’m extremely excited to see what we’ll do with that momentum.

Today I want to share just three ways I believe we can continue to honor our past and build bridges to our thriving future.

The first is by maintaining and enhancing our reputation as a place of academic distinction — a place where people come together to engage in life-changing research and education.

Over the last several decades, and under the extraordinary leadership of my predecessors Chancellors Wrighton and Danforth, we have become known throughout the world for our innovative, path-breaking teaching and research in all areas. We should be proud of all we’ve accomplished. Yet now it’s time to strengthen our resolve and build on the foundation we already have in place.

To all of my colleagues in this community: I challenge us to build on our foundation of excellent teaching by carefully assessing and improving our curriculum and pedagogy. We must do this at all levels — undergraduate, graduate and professional — to ensure all of our students have bridges and clearer paths ahead, both personally and professionally.

Likewise, we have eminent scholars conducting transformative research across our campuses. And now it’s time for us to do even more — to engage in more humanistic and creative work, to vigorously seek out more research funding, to conduct more basic and applied research that has a significant impact, to strengthen our global partnerships, and to bring more research into the marketplace.

And finally, we are a community comprised of amazing and talented students, faculty and staff. In fact, it’s the people who make this institution what it is today. And so, we must continue to invest in them — those already here and those who we are recruiting to join us. By doing so, we can build and create even more high-quality programs of distinction.

In order to achieve all of this, it’s going to take a targeted and multi-faceted strategic effort. We’ll need to grow our faculty and invest in our environment for education and research.  We’ll need to focus on the places of unique strength, or where we have the potential to develop into world-class leaders. We’ll need to carefully discern our investments, measure our outcomes and make adjustments as needed. And we’ll need our academic leadership, faculty and staff to continue joining together to make all of this possible. Finally and most importantly — we must take an equitable and inclusive approach to all of this work.

The second key priority is to continue to provide educational access for students regardless of their background or previous opportunities. As a leading educational institution, we must build sturdier bridges and more secure pipelines so that all talented people have the opportunity to receive a WashU education.

Here again, we have a strong foundation on which to build. Recently, we’ve doubled down on our efforts to admit higher percentages of Pell-eligible students from varying socioeconomic backgrounds. I’m thrilled we’re starting to see forward momentum in these areas, with a recent increase from 6 to 15 percent over the last six years. This is a good start, but we need to do more to ensure all admitted undergraduate students with incredible talent can walk through our doors.

I am committed to securing the resources necessary to be able to practice need-blind admissions in due course.

We must also continue to meet the full demonstrated financial need of our students as well as give them the resources they need to thrive while they’re here. This is our moral responsibility — one that includes more than just tuition, room and board. It also requires all of us in the community to look carefully at everything we do, including our curriculum, to make certain every student can flourish in their chosen area of study regardless of who they are or from where they come.

At the graduate and professional level, we already have a lot to be proud of.

Our recent $100 million commitment to give up to 50 percent of our medical students free tuition is a good start.

The work various schools on the Danforth Campus are doing to increase tuition assistance at the graduate and professional levels is another.

And the McDonnell Scholars Academy, which provides ample financial support and robust leadership preparation to exceptional international students, is still another.

These are all great starts, and I look forward to building on that foundation. However, these commitments, at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, will not be inexpensive. We will need to join together to deploy our current resources more effectively, and to develop new resources to fund this noble work.

To increase our momentum, I believe now we should focus on talented students close to home.

That’s why I’m making a pledge that, beginning next fall, any admitted undergraduate student from Missouri or the southern portion of Illinois who is Pell-eligible or with a family income of less than $75,000 will be able to attend Washington University free of charge.

And for those undergraduate students already enrolled at WashU who would qualify, they, too, will benefit from this pledge beginning next fall.

We are making this “WashU Pledge” first because it’s the right thing to do. In addition, we are Washington University “in St. Louis.” That means we have a unique responsibility to provide opportunity for students in our extended region — to the four corners of Missouri and our neighbors in the southern portion of Illinois. By doing so, we’re attracting our very best and brightest and keeping them right here, close to home.

That brings me to my third and final takeaway, which is that it’s time to double down on our role and impact in St. Louis.

As an institution founded with the very intent to provide increased educational access at the local level, we are Washington University because of St. Louis. We’re proud to be Washington University in St. Louis.

And today, I’m calling us to be Washington University for St. Louis.

I see it as our “WashU Compact” — a commitment between us and the greater St. Louis region as we look to strengthen our community partnerships and impact “In St. Louis and For St. Louis.”

Of course, our history informs us that we’ve long been with and for St. Louis. As former faculty member and mayor of St. Louis in the 1950s and ’60s Raymond H. Tucker once said, “It is difficult for one to imagine the university without the city or the city without the university. They have made each other great. … The community and the university grow together.”

We are for St. Louis through education, with many K-12 initiatives to help more students throughout the region realize their full potential.

We are for St. Louis through research that can only be done in St. Louis, like the Living Earth Collaborative in partnership with the St. Louis Zoo and the Missouri Botanical Garden.

We are for St. Louis through patient care and improving the health of our community, alongside BJC Health System.

We are for St. Louis through the economic stability we provide the region as the third-largest employer.

We are also for St. Louis through our community impact such as our collaboration on neighborhood and real estate development, and by helping uplift the region through service-learning.

Indeed, here again we have incredible momentum; we already are for St. Louis. But today, we must commit to utilizing everything we do as an opportunity for community outreach, cooperation, growth and well-being.

Being a good neighbor and being one of the world’s great research universities are not mutually exclusive. Rather, they amplify each other. By the same token, when all individuals have the same opportunities to thrive and flourish, all of us serve to benefit.

I want to eradicate any kind of perception that St. Louis is merely WashU’s side gig. Rather, St. Louis should become one of our primary foci as we think through the lens: “In St. Louis. For St. Louis.”

With that said, I can think of four things we must do in order to enhance our role and impact in the region.

First, we must confront the most significant social issues facing St. Louis through our research mission — significant challenges including some of the largest income disparities in the nation, health disparities that are unacceptable, high levels of crime, malnutrition, looming environmental concerns, and limited educational opportunities for far too many children.

As we continue to move forward, we must capitalize on more basic and applied research that directly affects our neighborhoods and communities.

During this last year on campus, I have come to learn about the immense talent and passion so many of our faculty, staff and students bring to this work. I am hopeful others will join them so we can have an even greater impact.

The second thing we must do is open our educational doors to those living in St. Louis and beyond. In addition to our WashU Pledge and other financial aid, we have begun the work to enhance University College. We recently announced the decision to make University College stand-alone, to be even more nimble and flexible as we seek to offer in-demand programs at the flip of a switch. With an ambition to further expand University College, we will begin to offer courses across our entire curriculum for anyone in St. Louis who wants a WashU education.

The third thing we must do is continue to bolster our strong partnership with BJC on health access and disparity work as we continue to improve the health and well-being of those across our community. These are also issues to which many colleagues across our schools and departments are committed. We must continue to synergize that work and enhance our impact here at home.

And finally, the fourth thing we must do is think about how WashU as an employer can do even more. Let’s begin to think collectively about how our practices can do the most good for the people and communities that comprise the St. Louis region.

Our resolve to enhance our role and impact in St. Louis and for St. Louis is going to take a concerted and strategic effort — both on campus and within the community. In the coming months, I will call upon you to help us chart the course forward.

Friends — it’s clear we’re making immense strides. I view my role as your 15th chancellor to increase our momentum and help build the bridges to our shared future — the future of this institution, the future of St. Louis, the future of this country and the future of the world.

In order to continue this work, though, we need to do it together. It’s going to take all of us to roll up our sleeves, build bridges and commit ourselves to the collective work ahead — all for the sake of our mission to improve lives in service of the greater good.

As chancellor, I commit to joining alongside you, to being open and transparent about our vision, to being approachable and willing to tap into your collective wisdom, to building a culture of accountability and trust, and to helping us continue to become a place that treats all people with dignity, equity and respect.

This is my commitment to you, and I hope you’ll make the same commitment in return as we hone in on these three key areas: academic distinction, educational access and our role and impact in St. Louis.

Just like James Buchanan Eads took a vision and turned it into something truly spectacular — now we must do the same as we carry the spirit of the Eads Bridge, the spirit of Washington University, and the spirit of St. Louis forward. We must do this, not just for our own sake, but for the sake of all.

By doing so, my hope is that 20 years from now, we can confidently say that Washington University is:

• A place that continues to be world-renowned for cutting-edge research, transformative and values-oriented education, and compassionate patient care;
• A place that has opened its doors widely and freely to anyone with talent who wishes to receive a WashU education;
• A place that has been a leader in the continued growth and prosperity of the St. Louis region;
• And a place that helped lead — and perhaps even transformed — higher education to meet the demands of our society.

Once again, I’m extremely honored to share in this moment with all of you, and to help us move forward along the path toward distinction. Thank you again for being here to celebrate this momentous occasion, and now it is time to build even more bridges!

Thank you.

The post Chancellor Andrew D. Martin’s inaugural address appeared first on The Source.

In an inaugural address that both celebrated the accomplishments of Washington University in St. Louis and challenged the university community to do more to improve the lives of those in our neighborhoods as well as across the globe, Chancellor Andrew D. Martin vowed to build upon the university’s momentum as a leader in teaching, research and patient care.

Washington University, he said, has accomplished much as an institution of academic distinction — one that has produced transformational and translational knowledge and greatly expanded access to students of all backgrounds. Now, he said, Washington University should leverage its accomplishments to benefit the entire region. 

“It’s time to double down on our role and impact in St. Louis,” Martin, the university’s 15th chancellor, said at his inauguration ceremony Oct. 3 in Brookings Quadrangle. “As an institution founded with the very intent to provide increased educational access at the local level, we are Washington University because of St. Louis. We’re proud to be Washington University in St. Louis. And today, I’m calling us to be Washington University for St. Louis.

“I see it as our ‘WashU Compact’ — a commitment between us and the greater St. Louis region as we look to strengthen our community partnerships and impact ‘in St. Louis and for St. Louis.’” 

In support of this effort, Martin announced the WashU Pledge, a bold new financial aid program that will provide a free undergraduate education to incoming, full-time Missouri and southern Illinois students who are Pell Grant-eligible or from families with annual incomes of $75,000 or less.

The WashU Pledge covers the full cost of a Washington University education, including tuition, room, board and fees. Eligible undergraduate students already enrolled at WashU also will benefit from the pledge.

“We are making this ‘WashU Pledge’ first because it’s the right thing to do,” Martin said. “In addition, we are Washington University ‘in St. Louis.’ That means we have a unique responsibility to provide opportunity for students in our extended region — to the four corners of Missouri and our neighbors in the southern portion of Illinois. By doing so, we’re attracting our very best and brightest and keeping them right here, close to home.” 

The  announcement, made before a crowd of Washington University students, faculty, staff, trustees and alumni as well as local civic leaders and delegates from about 80 universities and colleges, inspired an extended standing ovation and, by the end of day, headlines and television and radio reports across both states.

Martin also vowed that Washington University, as an employer, investor, innovator and partner, would work to further improve the region’s health and well-being. And, most significantly, it would empower its greatest asset — its world-class faculty — to address the region’s complex challenges.

A number of those faculty members presented at an inaugural symposium hosted earlier in the day at Emerson Auditorium. Among the speakers were Bettina Drake, a professor at the School of Medicine who is studying ways to reduce regional cancer disparities; Sean Joe, a professor at the Brown School working to improve opportunities and health for black men in St. Louis; and Joe Scherrer, of the McKelvey School of Engineering, who is making St. Louis a frontrunner in cybersecurity education and research.

“We must confront the most significant social issues facing St. Louis through our research mission — significant challenges including some of the largest income disparities in the nation, health disparities that are unacceptable, high levels of crime, malnutrition, looming environmental concerns and limited educational opportunities for far too many children,” said Martin, who also vowed to increase the university’s faculty. “As we continue to move forward, we must capitalize on more basic and applied research that directly affects our neighborhoods and communities.” 

In contemplating the university’s momentum as both a regional partner and an institution of higher education, Martin conjured a powerful metaphor: Eads Bridge. The longest and largest bridge of its time, the Eads Bridge was an engineering marvel and an economic lifeline. 

“I like to think Washington University is a lot like the Eads Bridge,” Martin said. “We build bridges between faculty, staff and students. Between doctors and patients. Between students and alumni. We intentionally build bridges across differences as we aspire to become a place that is both diverse and unapologetically committed to equity and inclusion — because we know full well that diversity on paper is one thing, and equity and inclusion are another.

“We must build these bridges because it’s at the very core of our understanding of American higher education. It’s imperative for us to continue to move forward, even despite higher education’s public-facing challenges. While the national perception wanes, we must turn those challenges not into threats — but into opportunities.”

Martin assumed the chancellorship June 1, succeeding Mark S. Wrighton, who served as chancellor for 24 years. Martin is the former dean of the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. He previously served on the Washington University faculty after earning his doctorate in political science here. He is only the second alumnus to lead the university in its 166-year history.

Filled with pomp and circumstance and a good deal of WashU spirit and humor, the ceremony featured music from the Washington University Wind Ensemble, Concert Choir and Chamber Choir; a poem from Paul Tran, a senior poetry fellow in the Writing Program in Arts & Sciences; and remarks from representatives of the student body, staff, faculty and alumni as well as Andrew E. Newman, chair of the university’s Board of Trustees, who officially installed Martin as chancellor. 

Representing the faculty, Jennifer Lodge, vice chancellor for research and professor of molecular microbiology at the School of Medicine, told Martin the university’s 3,800 faculty members are ready to join him in his quest for excellence and action and encouraged him to stick around for the long haul. 

“We have a tradition of our chancellors serving for decades and we are privileged to have two former chancellors, Bill Danforth and Mark Wrighton, here at your inauguration, both of whom served 24-year terms with dignity, honor and effectiveness,” Lodge said. “So we look forward to sometime after the year 2043 to saying thank you for all that you have accomplished as our 15th chancellor and the difference you have made to Washington University and to humanity. No pressure.”

Staff member Wes Brooks said Martin already has demonstrated the leadership that makes Washington University both a premier institution and a caring family.

“When I think about family, I think the one thing that makes that happen is great leadership,” said Brooks, a winner of the Gloria W. White Distinguished Service Award. “What I love about this university and the leadership here is that it stands for inclusion, it stands for diversity, but most of all, it stands for the people.”

The ceremony closed with bagpipers, the ringing of the chimes at Graham Chapel and a reception where Martin, a big fan of St. Louis sports, was surprised by a visit from the Stanley Cup, which the St. Louis Blues won in June. The celebration continued with a concert for students and a fireworks display.

Just the day before, the university celebrated the dedication of the East End Transformation, the two-year, $360 million campus expansion that added three academic buildings, two multi-use facilities, an expansion of the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum and an underground parking garage topped by an expansive new park. 

“Thank you again for being here to celebrate this momentous occasion,” Martin said as he concluded his remarks. “Now it is time to build even more bridges!” 

Read the complete transcript of Martin’s address here.

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In the late 1990s, IBM’s Deep Blue computer defeated world chess champion Garry Kasparov. The loss shocked the chess world and led Kasparov to envision a new form of chess called centaur chess, in which a human and computer cooperate as a team, modeled after the man-horse beast from Greek mythology.

An interdisciplinary, multi-institutional team of researchers plans to adapt this centaur analogy to accelerate scientific discovery. The team plans to develop a new framework to speed the discovery of electronic materials based on active machine learning and intelligent search, human-machine interaction and visualization with a two-year, $1.8 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The grant is part of the NSF’s $300 million 10 Big Ideas program and falls under the Harnessing the Data Revolution Big Idea, which focuses on the emerging field of data science.

Roman Garnett, assistant professor of computer science & engineering in the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, brings his research and experience in active machine learning to the project with $306,000 in funding. Garnett, who has an NSF CAREER Award for his work in active machine learning, has extensive experience applying machine learning to automate discovery, particularly in active search for drug and materials discovery. In this project, his expertise will help to design a framework that most efficiently reaches its objective.

“Making new materials is really expensive,” Garnett said. “You can do experiments in the lab, but they are costly and slow. Computational simulations are cheaper, but not perfect. Intuitively we want to do the computations to get an idea of the most promising possibilities, then be confident enough to spend the money to run the experiments in the lab.”

Garnett describes this as multifidelity learning, which simultaneously reasons about expensive, high-fidelity, in-lab experiments as well as cheaper, lower-fidelity computations. Multifidelity learning enables cost-effective decision-making by carefully modeling the tradeoff between the cost of collecting data and the information it provides.

Collaborating with Garnett on the project are Remco Chang, associate professor of computer science, Tufts University; Jane Greenberg, the Alice B. Kroeger Professor at Drexel University; Steven Lopez, assistant professor of chemistry and chemical biology, Northeastern University; and Eric Toberer, associate professor of physics, Colorado School of Mines.

In addition to the computational and experimental work, the team plans to bring in a human component.

“In a lot of these active learning pipelines, everything is automated and we try to get the human out of the loop,” Garnett said. “But in these scientific applications, we want to make sure the human is involved and that the computer is aiding the human by being better at planning. Through the visualization, we want to give them insight into the system that they couldn’t see before. The human and computer thus cooperate as a team and learn from each other.”

Their plan would also allow a user to provide feedback on proposed experiments.

“The user will bring in other knowledge that a machine learning algorithm would not have, such as, ‘I have a PhD in chemistry, and I know that those molecules would make my lab explode if I tried to combine them,’” Garnett said. “This will serve as another type of fidelity — the human provides another source of information we can seamlessly incorporate into our model. Now the computer can benefit from the human’s expertise while the human benefits from the algorithm’s ability to intelligently search complex spaces.”

Bringing together the five collaborators into developing the machine learning framework will be a unique experience, Garnett said. They met as part of a competitive ideas lab last spring to develop ideas for the Harnessing the Data Revolution Big Idea.

“Our team includes experts from a wide range of fields,” Garnett said. “Just as we envision the human-computer team cooperating to discover new materials, we will cooperate with each other to discover new methodologies enabling that team to succeed.”

The McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis focuses intellectual efforts through a new convergence paradigm and builds on strengths, particularly as applied to medicine and health, energy and environment, entrepreneurship and security. With 99 tenured/tenure-track and 38 additional full-time faculty, 1,387 undergraduate students, 1,448 graduate students and 21,000 alumni, we are working to leverage our partnerships with academic and industry partners — across disciplines and across the world — to contribute to solving the greatest global challenges of the 21st century.

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Yulia Nevskaya’s first foray into the “World of Warcraft” started one evening at 7 p.m. She created an avatar to represent her in the online video game and set off to explore another land.

“It’s like another Earth. It looked like paradise,” Nevskaya said. “I was completely immersed.”

The next thing she knew, it was 4 a.m.

Nevskaya is an assistant professor of marketing at Washington University in St. Louis’ Olin Business School who studies, among other things, how consumers form habits. Her recent research used data that a bot gleaned from World of Warcraft, a massively popular, multiplayer role-playing computer game set in a fantasy universe.

Blizzard Entertainment launched the game in 2004, and within seven years it had more than 10 million subscribers worldwide. A user in character in World of Warcraft spends, on average, 12.5 hours per week playing the game, and more than 53 million people in the U.S. played online games at least once a month in 2016, for example.

The study emerges against a backdrop of societal concern over the overuse of online products and screens, including games and beyond.

Nevskaya and co-author Paulo Albuquerque of INSEAD in France focused their investigation on three main actions that the game developer has at its disposal to manage consumers’ use of the game: redesigning content and in-game reward schedules, sending notifications to gamers, and imposing time limits on gameplay. In all, they analyzed a random sample of 402 gamers and nearly 15,000 gaming sessions.

They discovered this: When a firm changes its game’s rewards schedule and also limits how long gamers can play in a sitting, the firm can actually make more money — and people devote a smaller share of their time on gaming.

“It’s a win-win outcome for both the firm and consumers,” Nevskaya said.
“Those actions led to higher revenues and a smaller share of people’s time devoted to gaming, curbing potentially excessive use of the product.”

The Journal of Marketing Research published their paper “How Should Firms Manage Excessive Product Use? A Continuous-Time Demand Model to Test Reward Schedules, Notifications, and Time Limits” in March.

The researchers found gamers’ slower consumption of content led to an increase in their long-term engagement with the product, which is based on subscriptions. At the time of the research, subscription fees were about 50 cents a day on a weekly or monthly automated payment plan.

“What’s good for the consumer is not necessarily bad for the company,” Nevskaya said.

Notifications might reinforce habit

Nevskaya and Albuquerque built an empirical model that mimics how consumers make choices so they could learn about gamers’ decisions — such as when to start and stop playing. Their approach allowed them to study consumers’ responses to product design, notifications and rewards over time, as well as to identify people who display signs of habitual gaming. According to the study, more than two-thirds of gamers exhibit signs of habitual gaming with, on average, 100.8 minutes in every 24-hour period.

The data were collected by a software program that logged onto the game server every 5 to 10 minutes. It recorded gamers’ avatars present on the server at the moment, as well as their current experience level and the content area in which they were playing.

Yes, they found that altering in-game reward schedules and imposing time limits leads to shorter gaming sessions and longer subscriptions. But they also learned that notifications saying players should take a break don’t help.

Here’s the rub: Because a suggestion to take a break may arrive at a time when a gamer is not yet satiated with a gaming session and is in a “hot habit state,” in Nevskaya’s terms, it also may motivate the gamer to return quickly to the game — and reinforce the gaming habit. Notifications lead to a pattern of shorter but more frequent sessions, resulting in a significant increase in active gaming time for a large group of gamers, the authors discovered.

“Our paper addresses the important question of how to curb excessive screen usage, which has been a frequent concern among public policymakers,” Nevskaya said.

Gaming disorder

Since 2014, the researchers note, the World Health Organization (WHO) has been evaluating the public health implications of excessive use of the internet, computers, smartphones and other devices. Last year, the WHO included “gaming disorder” in the 11th edition of the International Classification of Diseases as a clinically recognizable and significant syndrome when “the pattern of gaming behavior is of such a nature and intensity that it results in marked distress or significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational or occupational functioning.”

With about $19.9 billion in sales in 2016 worldwide, the online video gaming industry especially benefits from new technologies that allow almost-constant online connectivity. Online and mobile games and social media platforms have spent significant resources to increase product use through customized content, frequent promotions and virtual rewards, the authors note.

“‘Gamification’ of products is a common practice, which makes understanding of how consumers react to game-like product features increasingly important,” they write.

“We’re not claiming that gaming is harmful. It can be a wonderful pastime,” Nevskaya said. “But it’s potentially harmful when enjoyed in excess.”

As a marketing expert, she said she feels a responsibility to consumers.

“We can agree that marketing has become very sophisticated” in large part because of the massive troves of data now available to companies, she said. “Academics as well as responsible businesses should help consumers navigate the field safely.”

Games like World of Warcraft are a goldmine of information for marketing professors such as Yulia Nevskaya at Olin Business School. (2015 video)

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In a certain sense, physics is the study of the universe’s symmetries. Physicists strive to understand how systems and symmetries change under various transformations.

New research from Washington University in St. Louis realizes one of the first parity-time (PT) symmetric  quantum systems, allowing scientists to observe how that kind of symmetry — and the act of breaking of it — leads to previously unexplored phenomena. The work from the laboratory of Kater Murch, associate professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, is published Oct. 7 in the journal Nature Physics.

Other experiments have demonstrated PT symmetry in classical systems such as coupled pendulums or optical devices, but this new work in Murch’s lab, along with experiments in China by Yang Wu et al., reported in Science this May, provides the first experimental realization of a PT-symmetric quantum system.

“For us, certainly, the biggest motivation is to explore the unknown territories of quantum physics,” said Mahdi Naghiloo, lead author of the paper who recently earned his PhD at Washington University. “We were curious to experimentally explore quantum systems when they are pushed into the complex world and look for powerful tools they may offer.”

These and future PT symmetry experiments have potential applications to quantum computing.

The rest of the team included Murch; Maryam Abbasi, a Washington University graduate student; and Yogesh Joglekar, a theoretical physicist from Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI).

A new symmetry in quantum systems

If you reflect a system in a mirror, that’s called a parity transformation. This transformation sends a right hand to a left hand, and vice-versa. If you record a video of the system’s evolution and play it backwards, that’s time reversal. If you perform both of these transformations simultaneously, and the system looks the same as it did before, then the system has PT symmetry.

The study of PT symmetry has its roots at Washington University, where in 1998 Carl Bender, the Wilfred R. and Ann Lee Konneker Distinguished Professor of Physics, co-authored a seminal paper establishing the requirement that quantum systems be Hermitian is not necessary in order for them to have real energy values. Rather, the weaker requirement of PT symmetry are sufficient. This breakthrough initiated a field of mathematical physics dedicated to studying such systems.

Spurred on by Bender, Murch has been interested in the topic since arriving at Washington University in 2013, but until recently, no one understood how to make a quantum system PT-symmetric.

Joglekar, a theorist, was interested in realizing PT systems across different platforms. He had worked with experimentalists to do so with electrical circuits, fluids, single photons and ultra-cold atoms. A fortuitous discussion between Murch and Joglekar in late 2017 provided the necessary insight.

“Almost immediately, we sketched on the board exactly what the idea was. In 10 minutes, we had the whole idea for the experiment,” Murch recalled.

The team used a superconducting circuit, called a qubit, to generate a three-state quantum system. The first excited state tends to decay to the ground state, and the two excited states have an oscillatory coupling. Using a technique called post-selection, the team considered only those trials where the qubit did not decay to the ground state, a choice that gives rise to effective PT symmetry. Controlling two parameters related to the energy of the system, they studied how the time-evolution behavior depended on those parameters.

“The key to this experiment was being able to control the environment so that just the excited state decays and the other states don’t decay, and that was something that we could deliberately manufacture,” Murch said. “At the same time, we can initialize it into a particular state and then we can do this process of quantum state tomography, where we’re figuring out exactly what the quantum state is doing after some period of time.”

Complex energies

The weird phenomena that the team observed stem from the fact that the system has complex energies — that is, they involve the square root of -1.

Every complex number has two square roots (for example, 4 has 2 and -2 as square roots) except for 0, which only has one (itself). A point where two values coalesce into just one is known as a degeneracy, an important concept in many areas of physics. Here, the square root degeneracy appears in the parameter space, where it’s called the “exceptional point.” This point divides parameter space into a PT-symmetric region, where the system oscillates in time, and a PT-broken region, where the system experiences decay. Such behavior stands in stark contrast with typical quantum systems that always oscillate in time.

A second consequence of the complex energies is referred to as coalescence of eigenstates. The two eigenstates of the system — that is, the states with definite energies — are normally orthogonal to each other, a condition analogous to two lines being perpendicular. But as the system approaches the exceptional point, the angle between the eigenstates decreases until they become parallel at the exceptional point itself, just like the positive and negative square roots coalesce to the single value 0. Until now, this type of degeneracy had never been seen in a quantum system.

Potential applications to quantum computing

The team’s work is just the beginning of the experimental study of PT symmetry in quantum mechanics. Theory predicts strange geometric effects associated with encircling the exceptional point, which the lab is now trying to measure in experiments.

According to Murch, the “bane of a quantum engineer’s existence,” is decoherence, or the loss of quantum information. Early indications, based on quantum photonic simulations by Joglekar and Anthony Laing at the University of Bristol in England, suggest that in the Murch lab’s set-up, the decay from the first excited state to the ground state might slow the process of decoherence, providing the possibility for more robust quantum computing.

The PT symmetry collaboration between Murch and Joglekar continues through the fall while Joglekar spends a semester as a visiting professor at Washington University.

Joglekar emphasized the importance of collaboration between theorists like himself and experimentalists like Murch. “It’s a very dynamic back-and-forth enterprise,” he said. “And it should be like that, because you want to in the end understand nature. Nature doesn’t care whether you call yourself a theorist or experimentalist.”

Funding: This research is supported by National Science Foundation.

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Researchers long wondered how the billions of independent neurons in the brain come together to reliably build a biological machine that easily beats the most advanced computers. All of those tiny interactions appear to be tied to something that guarantees an impressive computational capacity.

Over the past 20 years, evidence mounted in support of a theory that the brain tunes itself to a point where it is as excitable as it can be without tipping into disorder, similar to a phase transition. This criticality hypothesis asserts that the brain is poised on the fine line between quiescence and chaos. At exactly this line, information processing is maximized.

However, one of the key predictions of this theory — that criticality is truly a set point, and not a mere inevitability — had never been tested. Until now. New research from Washington University in St. Louis directly confirms this long-standing prediction in the brains of freely behaving animals.

“When neurons combine, they actively seek out a critical regime,” said Keith Hengen, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences and lead author of the new paper published Oct. 7 in the journal Neuron. “Our new work validates much of the theoretical interest in criticality and demonstrates that criticality is a hallmark of normally functioning networks.”

Criticality is actively regulated, the researchers determined. But the mechanisms underlying this optimized state are not straightforward.

“We were surprised to find that, in our models, it was largely accounted for by a population of inhibitory neurons that, in retrospect, are well poised to regulate the organization of the larger network,” Hengen said.

A direct observation of criticality

Criticality is the only known computational regime that, by its very definition, optimizes information processing — such as memory, dynamic range and the ability to encode and transmit complex patterns.

Theoretical physicists originally proposed that the brain may be critical. Neuroscientists had a mixed reaction.

“There’s a long history of solid theoretical work on criticality and some fun controversy that adds spice,” Hengen said. “I think that this controversy comes from two places. First, much of the work in vivo has been largely descriptive, I think because these datasets are hard to collect and challenging to analyze. Either way, direct demonstration that criticality is something that the brain attends to has been absent.

“Second, there’s been quite a bit of argument about the math people use to measure criticality,” Hengen said. “Recently, people moved away from measuring simple power laws, which can pop out of random noise, and have started looking at something called the exponent relation. So far, that’s the only true signature of criticality, and it’s the basis of all of our measurements.”

“Our lab brings a very high caliber contribution to the discussion of criticality in the brain — because of the resolution [single neuron], and because of the total time we’re looking across,” he said. “We can watch critical dynamics as a function of time across an incredibly long period.”

The first author of the new study is Zhengyu Ma, a recent PhD physics graduate in Arts & Sciences, who conducted her work with Ralf Wessel, professor of physics. The research draws on data from neuronal recordings of freely behaving mice that Hengen collected at Brandeis University. Hengen has since built his own laboratory at Washington University, and he is collecting his own neuronal recordings — recordings that span months and hundreds of neurons.

Such recordings are extraordinarily data-intensive and technically challenging.

“The temporal resolution is very high — that’s an advantage,” Ma said. “Also, they can record nine days. I’m still very surprised by this. There are not many labs that can reach nine days of recording.” With few exceptions, the previous state-of-practice for neuronal recordings was 30 minutes to a few hours, tops — a maximum that use to limit experimental tests of criticality.

With Ma contributing to the computational heavy lifting, Hengen and his co-authors combined and processed the data from Hengen’s many single-neuron recordings over time to model activity across entire neural networks.

Criticality is disrupted, then re-emerges

Taking advantage of their ability to continuously track the activity of neurons for more than a week, the researchers first confirmed that network dynamics in the visual cortex are robustly tuned to criticality, even across light and dark cycles.

Next, by blocking vision in one eye, the researchers revealed that criticality was severely disrupted, more than a day before the manipulation affected the firing rates of individual neurons.

Twenty-four hours later, criticality re-emerged in the recordings — at which point individual neurons were suppressed by the visual deprivation.

“It seems that as soon as there’s a mismatch between what the animal expects and what it’s getting through that eye, the computational dynamic falls apart,” Hengen said.

“This is consistent with the theoretical physics that the critical regime is firing-rate independent,” he said. “It’s not about just the total number of spikes in the network, because the firing rate hasn’t changed at all at the very early part of deprivation — and yet the regime falls apart.”

The researchers now believe that criticality in the brain is likely connected to inhibitory neurons imposing and organizing the computational dynamics.

Actively tuning

The findings could have important implications for motor learning and for disease. The brain’s self-organization around criticality is an active process, Hengen noted, and impaired homeostatic regulation is increasingly implicated in severe human pathologies such as Alzheimer’s, epilepsy, Rett Syndrome, autism and schizophrenia.

“One interpretation of this work is that criticality is a homeostatic end goal for networks in the brain,” Hengen said. “It’s an elegant idea: that the brain can tune an emergent property to a point neatly predicted by the physicists. And it makes intuitive sense, that evolution selected for the bits and pieces that give rise to an optimal solution. But time will tell. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

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The word agriculture conjures up an array of images: endless fields of corn stalks, amber waves of grain, the deserts of Africa… Africa? While thoughts of the African landscape may tend to invoke a dry and empty countryside, scientists at Washington University in St. Louis are working to develop self-sustaining plants that could eventually turn the Sahara into a sea of green.

Himadri B. Pakrasi, the Glassberg Greensfelder Distinguished University Professor in the department of biology in Arts & Sciences and director of the International Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability (InCEES), and Costas D. Maranas, professor of chemical engineering at Penn State, were recently awarded a $1.2-million grant from the National Science Foundation for their collaborative study of systems biology. Specifically, the Pakrasi and Maranas labs hope to decode the inner workings of cyanobacteria for the ultimate purpose of producing nitrogen-fixing crop plants.

For more than a century, farmers around the world have relied heavily on chemical fertilizers to help grow their plants and crops. Fertilizers contain nitrogen, an essential building block for all life forms to grow, and an element that is abundant in the earth’s atmosphere. However, creating man-made fertilizers is an energy intensive process that contributes to greenhouse gases and leads to run-off issues that severely damage the environment. A solution to this problem is to engineer plants to absorb nitrogen from the atmosphere and convert it into fertilizer, a process known as nitrogen fixation, so that the plants would become self-sufficient.

“If you have engineered seeds that you give to an African farmer, that farmer can then plant the seeds, which gives rise to a field of crops that would not need chemically synthesized fertilizer to grow,” Pakrasi said. “This has huge agricultural implications — not just for the affluent, Western world, but to the areas hardest hit by climate change.”

Easier said than done. Nitrogen fixation cannot take place in the cells of most photosynthetic organisms — plants that convert sunlight into energy — because when plants are undergoing photosynthesis, a byproduct is oxygen. And oxygen is like a poison when it mixes with nitrogenease, the enzyme that enables nitrogen fixation. However, there is an organism that can accommodate both photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation in the same cell: cyanobacteria.

Just like human beings, cyanobacteria have a robust circadian rhythm — a 24-hour biological cycle — during which they photosynthesize in the day and fix nitrogen at night. Scientists have long studied these bluish-green creatures, but do not have a detailed understanding of how circadian rhythms allow cyanobacteria to adjust its metabolism for both nitrogen fixation and photosynthesis to take place in the same cell. With advances in genetic modification tools, it is now possible to probe deeper into the details of this process.

“There are still missing parts of the cyanobacterial puzzle,” Pakrasi said. “The only way to identify what those missing parts are is to actually go into the cyanobacterium and tease apart the machinery. And that’s what this grant will allow us to do.”

In other words, the Pakrasi lab will perform a series of genetic modifications to the cyanobacteria and generate new data. The Maranas lab will then take the data and develop a predictive model for the inner working of the cyanobacterium. This iterative process will take some time, but the research is imperative to combating the climate changes facing the planet, Pakrasi said.

“It’s kind of like building an electric pickup truck,” Pakrasi said. “How do you go from a gasoline fueled car to a Tesla pickup truck? The basic technology for making a gas fueled car is already known, but we’re moving to a new paradigm of production in the form of a Tesla truck. Once we figure it out, we can deploy the new technology to our partners all over the world.”

Funding: This grant was organized by InCEES at Washington University in St. Louis.

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The fifth annual Olin Sports Business Summit convenes Oct. 18 in Knight Hall’s Emerson Auditorium at Washington University in St. Louis.

The 2019 lineup features numerous presentations from industry executives spanning such organizations as the NBA’s Golden State Warriors, Chicago Bulls and Brooklyn Nets; the NFL’s Miami Dolphins; the Pac-12 Conference; and a member of the ownership group for St. Louis’ new MLS franchise.

The full list of presenters and discussants includes (Washington University alumni in bold):

• Ken Borkan, founder and president, KB Capital
• Lee Broughton, Broughton Brand Co. and part of St. Louis MLS ownership group
• Meredith Geisler, communications senior vice president, Tandem Sports
• Neha Gupta, business operations director, and Tia Smith, account manager for esports, GumGum Sports
• Steve Horowitz, partner, Inner Circle Sports
• Kent Lacob, player development, Golden State Warriors
• Rohan Puthanangady, solution strategist, FanThreeSixty
• Shana Raven, marketing coordinator, Chicago Bulls
• Steve Tseng, executive vice president, Pac-12 Networks
• Jeroen van den Bergh, corporate development senior vice president, Allied Sports
• Jamie Weinstein, premium and membership services vice president, Miami Dolphins

The Oct. 18 presentations open at 8 a.m. with remarks from founder Patrick Rishe, director of the sports business program at Olin Business School.

The summit is part of the of 2019-20 Lacob Family Business of Sports Speaker Series.

Please register for the event here.  Limited seating remains.

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In architecture today, nothing is what it seems. Familiar outputs in the form of drawings, models and photographs are now produced through sophisticated digital tools and techniques. And though these products of electronic imaging may seem like replicas of their predecessors, they are in fact something entirely new.

So argues Constance Vale, assistant professor of architecture in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis. From Oct. 24-26, Vale will convene “Decoys & Depictions: Images of the Digital,”  a symposium exploring how digital images are constructed; the implications for how architects and artists operate; and the potential effects within social and political realms.

“Decoys are objects that share characteristics with images,” Vale said. “Depictions are images that have the qualities of objects.” Yet, unlike traditional representations, both decoys and depictions are primarily shaped by hidden matrixes of informational formats, frameworks and data sets. “They are attuned to the visual world for only a fraction of their existence,” she added.

For architects and artists, Vale said, these new data-driven modes raise important questions.

“How can a deeper understanding of electronic imaging and the ongoing technological developments therein reshape how we design and build?” she asked. “How might we reconsider conventional methods of display in relation to the circulation of images through social networking and web-based media?

“How can examining images closely change how we structure design pedagogy?”

Schedule and registration

Presented by the Sam Fox School’s College of Architecture and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design, “Decoys & Depictions” will investigate the effects of digital imaging on contemporary practice through lectures, panel sessions and exhibitions. The more than two dozen participants will include Sam Fox School architecture and art faculty as well as visiting architects from across the country.

Highlights of the symposium will include keynote lectures by Nader Tehrani, dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union in New York (Oct. 25), and Brett Steele, dean of the UCLA School of Arts and Architecture in Los Angeles (Oct. 26). Panel sessions will focus on “Image Formats,” “Image Accumulations,” “Image Frames” and “Image Fictions.”

All lectures and panels will take place in the Sam Fox School’s Anabeth and John Weil Hall and will be livestreamed via the symposium website.

Three related exhibitions, curated by Vale, will open in conjunction with the symposium. 

The first of these, at the Sam Fox School’s Des Lee Gallery, will feature projects by more than 30 architects and artists — the majority of whom are participants in the conference proceedings.

Included are works from O-S-A, Current Interests, Young & Ayata, Amanda Bowles, FreelandBuck, Michelle JaJa Chang, Somewhere Studio, Sage Dawson, Design Earth, Jonathan Hanahan, Amy Hauft, Derek Hoeferlin Design, Petra Kempf, Axi:Ome, Ruy Klein, Medium Architecture, MILLIØNS, Emiliano López Mónica Rivera Arquitectos, Architecture Office, WOJR, Patricia Olynyk, EXTENTS, Tim Portlock, Jack Risley, Curtis Roth, RUR, Buzz Spector, P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, Jonathan Stitelman, NADAAA, Hans Tursack, Factory of Smoke & Mirrors, Van Dyck Murphy Studio and Ultramoderne.

The exhibition will open Oct. 24 and remain on view through Nov. 16. The Des Lee Gallery is located at 1627 Washington Ave.

Other exhibitions will feature work by WashU architecture students (Oct. 18-Nov. 1 in Steinberg Hall) as well as highlight holdings from the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum’s permanent collection, including examples by Sophie Calle, Nick Cave, Trevor Paglen, Kiki Smith and Wolfgang Tillmans (Oct. 25 in Kemper).

All events are free and open to the public, but registration to the symposium is requested. For a complete schedule, visit decoysanddepictions.net.

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A new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis sheds light on how human gut microbes break down processed foods — especially potentially harmful chemical changes often produced during modern food manufacturing processes.

Eating processed foods such as breads, cereals and sodas is associated with negative health effects, including insulin resistance and obesity.

Reporting Oct. 9 in the journal Cell Host & Microbe, scientists have identified a specific human gut bacterial strain that breaks down the chemical fructoselysine, and turns it into harmless byproducts. Fructoselysine is in a class of chemicals called Maillard Reaction Products, which are formed during food processing. Some of these chemicals have been linked to harmful health effects. These findings raise the prospect that it may be possible to use such knowledge of the gut microbiome to help develop healthier, more nutritious processed foods.

The study was conducted in mice that were raised under sterile conditions, given known collections of human gut microbes and fed diets containing processed food ingredients.

“This study gives us a deeper view of how components of our modern diets are metabolized by gut microbes, including the breakdown of components that may be unhealthy for us,” said Jeffrey I. Gordon, MD, the Dr. Robert J. Glaser Distinguished University Professor and director of the Edison Family Center for Genome Sciences & Systems Biology. “We now have a way to identify these human gut microbes and how they metabolize harmful food chemicals into innocuous byproducts.”

Human gut microbial communities see foods as collections of chemicals. Some of these chemical compounds have beneficial effects on the communities of microbes living in the gut as well as on human health. For example, Gordon’s past work has shown that the gut microbiome plays a vital role in a baby’s early development, with healthy gut microbes contributing to healthy growth, immune function, and bone and brain development. But modern food processing can generate chemicals that may be detrimental to health. Such chemicals have been associated with inflammation linked to diabetes and heart disease. The researchers are interested in understanding the complex interactions between human gut microbes and the chemicals that are commonly consumed as part of a typical American diet.

In the new study, the researchers showed that a specific bacterium called Collinsella intestinalis breaks down the chemical fructoselysine into components that are harmless.

“Fructoselysine is common in processed food, including ultra-pasteurized milk, pasta, chocolate and cereals,” said first author Ashley R. Wolf, PhD, a postdoctoral researcher in Gordon’s lab. “High amounts of fructoselysine and similar chemicals in the blood have been linked to diseases of aging, such as diabetes and atherosclerosis.”

When fed a diet containing high amounts of fructoselysine, mice harboring Collinsella intestinalis in their gut microbial communities showed an increase in the abundance of this bacteria as well as an increase in the gut microbial communities’ ability to break down fructoselysine into harmless byproducts.

“This specific bacterial strain thrives in these circumstances,” Gordon said. “And as it increases in abundance, fructoselysine is metabolized more efficiently.”

He added, “The new tools and knowledge gained from this initial study could be used to develop healthier, more nutritious foods as well as design potential strategies to identify and harness certain types of gut bacteria shown to process potentially harmful chemicals into innocuous ones. A corollary is that they may help us distinguish between consumers whose gut microbial communities are either vulnerable or resistant to the effects of certain products introduced during food processing.”

Emphasizing the complexity of this task, Gordon, Wolf and their colleagues also showed that close cousins of Collinsella intestinalis did not respond to fructoselysine in the same way. These bacterial cousins, whose genomes vary somewhat, do not thrive in a fructoselysine-rich environment. The researchers said future studies are required before scientists will be able to identify and harness the specific capacities of individual microbes to clean up the array of potentially deleterious chemicals produced during some types of modern food manufacturing.

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), grant numbers DK70977, DK078669, and DK30292; the American Diabetes Association, grant number 1-16-PDF-125; the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation, grant number DRG-2303-17; and by the Russian Science Foundation, grant number 19-14-00305.

Gordon is a co-founder of Matatu Inc., a company characterizing the role of diet-by-microbiota interactions in animal health.

Wolf AR, et al. Bioremediation of a common product of food processing by a human gut bacterium. Cell Host & Microbe. Oct. 9, 2019.

Washington University School of Medicine’s 1,500 faculty physicians also are the medical staff of Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals. The School of Medicine is a leader in medical research, teaching and patient care, ranking among the top 10 medical schools in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. Through its affiliations with Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals, the School of Medicine is linked to BJC HealthCare.

Originally published by the School of Medicine

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