Research Wire

Peng Bai, assistant professor at the McKelvey School of Engineering, has received a $503,025 CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation.

Samantha Kirstin Barrick, a postdoctoral scholar in biochemistry and molecular biophysics and in the laboratory of Michael J. Greenberg at the School of Medicine, received a three-year $208,182 fellowship award from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Kun Wang, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, received a $506,053 grant from the NASA Emerging Worlds program for his project, “Experimental Studies of Volatile Fractionation in the Early Solar System.”

Jianmin Cui, at the McKelvey School of Engineering, and Po wei (Billy) Kang, an MD/PhD student at the School of Medicine, led an international team that studied heartbeat regulation and heart function. The work was published in Science Advances.

Weikai Li, along with Michael J. Greenberg, both at the School of Medicine, and Michael L. Gross, in Arts & Sciences, received a three-year $750,000 grant from American Heart Association for their research titled “Interdisciplinary structural studies of iron homeostasis in cardiovascular health.”

Michael S. Kinch, associate vice chancellor and director of the Centers for Research Innovation in Biotechnology and Drug Discovery, and professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the School of Medicine,, received a one-year $280,385 grant from Arnold Ventures for his research titled “CDEK: Clinical Data Experience Knowledge-base.”

Alex Holehouse, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the School of Medicine, received a one-year $91,539 grant from Dewpoint Therapeutics for his research titled “Bioinformatic tools for the analysis of phase separating proteins.”

The Musculoskeletal Research Center at Washington University School of Medicine has given Spencer Lake, associate professor of mechanical engineering and materials science at the McKelvey School of Engineering, a one-year $40,000 grant to use machine learning to better understand elbow injuries.

Physicists in Arts & Sciences, including Brian Rauch, are part of a team funded by NASA to develop the concept for the most sensitive survey of cosmic ultra-high energy neutrinos ever conducted. 

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) has awarded a $2.1 million four-year grant for cardiac optogenetics research led by Chao Zhou, associate professor of biomedical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering.