FUSE, our website for innovation and entrepreneurship, is highlighting examples of WashU faculty, alumni and students who are doing what they can to help and serve those directly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Weedy rice is a feral form of rice that infests paddies worldwide and aggressively outcompetes cultivated varieties. A new study led by biologists at Washington University in St. Louis shows that weed populations have evolved multiple times from cultivated rice, and a strikingly high proportion of contemporary Asian weed strains can be traced to a few Green Revolution cultivars that were widely grown in the late 20th century.

The task was as Herculean as it was heartbreaking: Pack and ship some 2,000 boxes of books, computers, medications and other essentials to Washington University students across the globe. 

Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and elsewhere are investigating whether transfusions of blood plasma from people who have recovered from COVID-19 can prevent or treat the disease. The approach was used with some success during the 1918 influenza pandemic.

As businesses around the country are closing their doors and transitioning to remote work, Andrew Knight, a professor of organizational behavior at Washington University’s Olin Business School, said they should expect a period of adjustment as people develop new routines, norms and shared understandings about how work will progress through a new medium.

In the first week since COVID-19 was designated a pandemic, requests for food pantries skyrocketed across the United States.  Requests for home-delivered meals more than tripled in the same time period, said a Brown School researcher who tracks calls to the national 2-1-1 helpline.

As faculty, students and staff come to grips with a new reality, the Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington University in St. Louis has leapt into action to help make the sudden, universitywide transition to online learning.

Among the research programs racing to develop therapies and vaccines for the new pandemic virus COVID-19 is one of the largest crowdsourced supercomputing projects in the world. Led by computational biophysicist Greg Bowman, at Washington University School of Medicine, the project is called Folding@home.

Campus life at Washington University in St. Louis has been upended in the wake of coronavirus, but the Habif Health and Wellness Center is doing everything it can to reach students and provide consultation and support.

Nautral killer (NK) cells may be more effective as immunotherapy for cancer treatment than adult NK cells that come from bone marrow, according to a new study from the School of Medicine.