Groundbreaking

Dignitaries, large crowd mark beginning of plant science center

A host of dignitaries -- scholars, educators and a senator joined a large crowd of wellwishers at the groundbreaking ceremony Aug. 2 for the new Donald Danforth Plant Science Center at Olive Boulevard and Warson Road in Creve Coeur. They spoke of the outstanding opportunity the center promises St. Louis and the region and plant scientists worldwide who will enhance their knowledge of cutting-edge biotechnology research at the center.

U.S. Senator Christopher S. "Kit" Bond; National Science Foundation (NSF) Director Rita Colwell; William H. Danforth, Washington University chancellor emeritus and chairman of the Danforth Plant Science Center board; his brother, former U.S. Senator John Danforth; and Peter H. Raven, Ph.D., the University's Englemann Professor of Botany in Arts and Sciences and director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, were among those who participated in the official beginning of the $75 million facility.

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Keck Foundation honors two faculty

The W.M. Keck Foundation of Los Angeles has awarded $900,000 to the School of Medicine for research on repairing the injured spinal cord. Dennis W. Choi, M.D., Ph.D., the Andrew B. and Gretchen P. Jones Professor of Neurology and head of the Department of Neurology, will lead the project.

The grant will support pioneering work on spinal cord transplantation. The long-term goal is to use cells derived from embryonic cells to replace lost tissue. Such transplants might enable the cord to function once more so patients could regain lost bladder and bowel control. Perhaps they might one day result in enough regeneration for people to walk again.

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Summer outreach programs draw crowds

Summertime and the living is anything but easy at Washington University. Laboratories on the Hilltop and Medical campuses have been teeming with students and teachers from the area and across the nation. They came here to hone their research expertise in a wide variety of outreach and enhancement programs.

University faculty from the schools of Arts and Sciences, Medicine and Engineering and Applied Science lent their knowledge to participants in programs sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Solutia, Inc. and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI).

The program with the broadest participation was the Solutia/NSF-sponsored Students and Teachers as Research Scientists (STARS). Washington University partnered with St. Louis University and the University of Missouri-St. Louis in this program, which ran from June 21 to July 30 and involved 31 faculty mentors from the three institutions, plus more than 20 other faculty who participated in various ways, from lecturing to giving demonstrations.

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Leading political scientist named to new Souers chair

James L. Gibson, Ph.D., one of the world's leading survey researchers in political science, has been named the second Sidney W. Souers Professor of Government.

Gibson joined the Department of Political Science in Arts and Sciences July 1. He will be formally installed in the professorship at a ceremony Sept. 28. He comes from the University of Houston where he taught for 16 years, most recently as the Cullen Distinguished Professor in the School of Social Sciences. He taught previously for eight years at the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee.

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