Joseph Jez, Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor and chair of biology in Arts & Sciences, along with two former researchers in his laboratory, P.A. Rea and R.E. Cahoon, was awarded a U.S. patent for engineered plants that could help detoxify, or remediate, soils contaminated with heavy metals.

Obesity expert Jonathan R. Brestoff, MD, PhD, assistant professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received a 2019 Career Award for Medical Scientists from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, a nonprofit organization dedicated to biomedical science through research and education.

Bronwen Konecky, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences, works at the cutting edge of an emerging research area that combines paleoclimate data with climate models. She received the Nanne Weber Early Career Award from the Paleoceanography and Paleoclimatology Section of the American Geophysical Union.

At the Arts & Sciences faculty welcome reception held Sept. 10 in Holmes Lounge, Dean Barbara A. Schaal presented the annual Arts & Sciences faculty awards for excellence in teaching and service. Awards were presented to Elizabeth Borgwardt, Stan Braude, Adrienne Davis, Steve Fazzari and Lerone Martin.

Washington University’s collaborative Center for Quantum Sensors was awarded a Quantum Leap Challenge Institute (QLCI) conceptualization grant from the National Science Foundation to help advance applications of quantum information science.

Sharon Cresci, MD, associate professor in the Cardiovascular Division at the School of Medicine, led a committee that developed the American Heart Association’s scientific statement on the potential for precision medicine to improve treatment for patients with heart failure.

Todd Braver, professor of psychological and brain sciences in Arts & Sciences, and of radiology and neuroscience at the School of Medicine, has been appointed to the National Advisory Council for Complementary and Integrative Health.

Dongyeon “Joanna” Kim, a second-year medical student at the School of Medicine, is one of 50 recipients of a $5,000 summer research fellowship from the Alpha Omega Alpha National Honor Medical Society. Kim is researching osteoarthritis, a common, degenerative joint disease that afflicts tens of millions of adults nationwide.

Radiation oncologist Dennis E. Hallahan, MD, of the School of Medicine, has been elected a senior member of the National Academy of Inventors. Hallahan is the Elizabeth H. and James S. McDonnell III Distinguished Professor of Medicine and head of the Department of Radiation Oncology. 

Michael Nowak, research professor of physics in Arts & Sciences, is a member of the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration that won the 2020 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics. The award recognizes the team’s achievement of making the first image of a supermassive black hole, “taken by means of an Earth-sized alliance of telescopes.”