News, milestones, and spotlights from across Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis.
 

• Marshall momentum
  Senior Omar Abdelmoity was awarded a Marshall Scholarship and will study health policy and population health sciences at Oxford and Cambridge, building on his work in mental health, Alzheimer’s research, and care for underserved communities.
• Shifting canopies
  Biologists Jonathan Myers and Toby Pennington found that tropical forests from the Amazon to the Andes are changing as temperatures rise, with heat-loving trees spreading and species in cooler areas gaining ground.
• Pathway to politics
  WUSTEPS helped Jayden Sheridan move from a planned path to law school to a PhD in American politics, reflecting the program’s work to demystify graduate study and bring more perspectives into political science.
• Archive discoveries
  Senior Maggie Lu’s research on the 1982 Chinatown garment workers’ strike, the largest Asian American labor action in U.S. history, became personal when she discovered her father had worked in the same textile industry.
• Research multiplier
  The Incubator for Transdisciplinary Futures turned $2 million in seed funding into $20 million in outside support, advancing Dean Feng Sheng Hu’s vision for bold, collaborative faculty research.
• Global reach
  Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, the internationally recognized journal housed at WashU since 1991, marks 60 years of advancing Spanish-language scholarship and training graduate students in academic publishing.
• Antibiotic assist
  Chemist Yan Yu developed tiny two-sided particles that help antibiotics break through bacterial defenses, offering a promising strategy against drug-resistant infections.
• Lessons that last
  At the inaugural Teaching Innovation Showcase, Arts & Sciences faculty shared classroom projects that extend into policy, community work, internships, and careers.
• Protecting primates
  A $1.5 million gift from Distinguished Trustee Andy Newman launched EPIC, a Living Earth Collaborative project using field expertise and high-tech monitoring to protect endangered primates in Madagascar and Africa’s Congo Basin.
• Diamond in the cell
  WashU researchers are using nanodiamonds as tiny sensors inside living cells, giving scientists a real-time view of cellular energy changes linked to diseases such as diabetes and heart failure.
• A distinguished five
  Petra Levin, Corinna Treitel, Ram Dixit, David Fike, and John E. McCarthy were named fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, honoring work that spans biology, geology, mathematics, and the history of science.
• The Bard abroad
  A $1.35 million gift from Lesley Malin, AB ’88, and Scott Helm, BSBA ’87, endowed WashU’s Shakespeare-in-London program, helping students study and perform at Shakespeare’s Globe for years to come.
• After the storm
  After an EF-3 tornado hit St. Louis in 2025, WashU undergraduates helped Professor Jeffrey Catalano and CLEAN STL test soil along the storm’s path for lead contamination.