Science & Technology

Michael W. Friedlander, professor emeritus of physics in Arts & Sciences, died April 29, 2021, in St. Louis. He was 92.

Michael Nowak, research professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, is co-author of a study in The Astrophysical Journal Letters that shares unprecedented observations of the black hole in the galaxy M87.

Michael Wysession, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, was recently named the winner of the 2021 Geosciences in the Media Award of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists. The honor recognizes Wysession’s many achievements in promoting geoscience literacy and education.

Scientists have long used information from sediments at the bottom of the ocean to reconstruct conditions in oceans of the past. But a new study from David Fike, professor of Earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, raises concerns about a common use of pyrite for this purpose.

In 2020, so much about what we know to be normal came to a grinding halt for the WashU community. One week in March, we’re looking ahead to spring break, and then suddenly it’s an unending hiatus. Yet the work of the university, and its families, goes on.

Michael Krawczynski, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, and graduate student Andrea Goltz investigate the deep, inner workings of Shiveluch, a volcano on a remote peninsula in northeastern Russia.

Gaining control of the flow of electrical current through atomically thin materials is important to potential future applications in photovoltaics or computing. Physicists in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis have discovered one way to locally add electrical charge to a graphene device.

Jeff Catalano, professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, was elected a fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America. The honor recognizes Catalano’s outstanding contributions to the advancement of the fields of mineralogy, crystallography, geochemistry and petrology.

Saori Pastore, assistant professor of physics in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, helps explain what happens in nuclei when they decay, scatter among each other or come into contact with subatomic particles. Her recent paper, “Weak Transitions in Light Nuclei,” published in Frontiers in Physics, contributes to a body of increasingly accurate, descriptive calculations of nuclear structure and reactions.

Li Yang, professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, conducted research with black phosphorus — a material with a thickness of just a few atomic layers — in a study that is hailed as a milestone of the past 50 years by the Physical Review B, an academic journal of the American Physical Society.