nIH

Mark Anastasio has been appointed chair of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Biomedical Imaging Technology B Study Section (BMIT-B) for a two-year term beginning July 1. He is professor of biomedical engineering and of electrical and systems engineering at the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis.

A team of Washington University students on the Medical Campus recently won top honors in the Neuro Startup Challenge, a biotech startup competition designed to commercialize promising brain-related discoveries of scientists at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).The team developed a business plan to commercialize a test for patients with multiple sclerosis.

Washington University in St. Louis student Beakal M. Gezahegn has been named a 2015 STRIDE Undergraduate Research Fellow by the American Physiological Society.

In an effort to increase diversity in the neurosciences, Washington University in St. Louis has received a five-year, $1.5 million federal grant to participate in a national pipeline program with that mission.

Herbert W. Virgin IV, MD, PhD, the Edward Mallinckrodt Professor of Pathology and Immunology and head of the Department of Pathology and Immunology, has received several multiyear grants.

Kelly Monk, PhD, assistant professor of developmental biology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, has received three nerve research grants.

George Macones, MD, head of the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, has been named the new steering committee chair for the Maternal-Fetal Medicine Units Network (MFMU) at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

U.S. Sen. Roy Blunt (left) and Francis S. Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health, visited the School of Medicine this week to talk to researchers, administrators and entrepreneurs about scientific research and the need to boost and sustain federal funding for it.

Lihong Wang, PhD, the Gene K. Beare Distinguished Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science at Washington University in St. Louis, has received a prestigious BRAIN Initiative Award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Wang’s three-year, $2.7 million award, is one of 58 grants totaling $46 million announced Sept. 30 by Francis S. Collins, MD, PhD, director of the NIH, in Washington, D.C.

Researchers at the School of Medicine are leading a nationwide clinical trial to determine whether one of the most commonly used probiotics can safely and effectively treat infants and toddlers suffering from acute gastroenteritis, otherwise known as stomach virus or “stomach flu.” David Schnadower, MD, is the trial’s principal investigator.