Dr. Susan Dutcher, professor of genetics and of cell biology and physiology is one of 120 members and 30 international members recently newly elected to the National Academy of Sciences in recognition of her distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. Election to the academy is considered one of the highest honors accorded a U.S. scientist or engineer.
On April 24, 2025, the Office of Technology Management hosted the eighth annual Celebration of Inventors, an event to honor and recognize Washington University inventors, researchers and faculty entrepreneurs. Dr. Rob Mitra received the 2025 Chancellor’s Award for Innovation and Entrepreneurship!
A new research, led by Genetics Assistant Professor, Tychele Turner, used the Google DeepMind tool AlphaFold and their own newly developed computational tools to model the disease-causing changes to proteins in almost 40,000 families with neurodevelopmental disorders and in more than 10,000 sequenced tumors representing five cancer types. This research was recently published in the journal Cell Genomics.
The Department of Genetics at Washington University School of Medicine marked a significant milestone on April 24th, 2025 with its 50th Anniversary Symposium, held at the Eric P. Newman Education Center and Moore Auditorium. The event brought together past and present faculty, students, and postdoctoral researchers to celebrate the department’s rich history and its ongoing contributions to the field of genetics and genomics.
AIMBE Fellows represent the top 2% of medical and biological engineers. They include the most accomplished medical and biological engineers in academia, industry, education, clinical practice, and government. Congratulations to Dr. Rob Mitra for being inducted on March 31 in Arlington, Va. along with 169 other new fellows from across the United States.
Congratulations to Dr. Brett Maricque for receiving the 2025 Dean’s Impact Award.
Seven faculty members at Washington University in St. Louis are among the 471 new fellows selected by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), one of the most distinct honors in the scientific community. Congratulations to Dr. Tim Schedl on his election to AAAS.
Congratulations to Dr. Guoyan Zhao and co-investigator Dr. Hiroko Yano for being selected for the Hope Center Pilot Grant! The project “Identification and validation of drug candidates for repurposing in Huntington disease” will be funded in full $100,000 for the award period of January 1, 2025 – December 31, 2026!
Emma Casey, a second year PhD student in the Jin lab has been awarded a highly competitive NINDS Diversity Supplement to work on characterizing and assessing the impact of mitochondrial DNA variations in congenital hydrocephalus. Emma is the first trainee from the Department of Genetics to receive the significant 3-year NIH grant award totaling $225K. Congratulations!
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis has received two large grants renewing funding for the Human Pangenome Reference Sequencing Project. This ambitious program began in 2019 with the goal of increasing the diversity of human genome sequences that are pooled into the widely used reference genome. A thorough representation of human genetic diversity can help researchers discover how genetic variation contributes to disease and perhaps offer new routes to innovative treatments.