Have you ever confused a coffee cup for a pen? Or a mango? Or your Aunt Beatrice?

Of course not. Sure, maybe you once poured coffee into your cereal. But that’s because you were distracted or sleepy, not because you saw a coffee cup and thought “milk.”

Keith Hengen, assistant professor of biology in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, is wowed by the organizational prowess of our brains. How, he wonders, do hundreds of millions of neurons interact reliably time after time, especially given that the proteins that power neurons have half-lives on the order of seconds to hours?

“And yet, a cup is a cup,” Hengen said. “You are, in essence, saying, ‘We are going to rebuild this Lego castle constantly, and it’s always going to produce the same architecture. We can add new Legos — say the concept of a travel mug — but it’s still going to rebuild this same castle. We don’t know where that set of instructions lies. We don’t know how it is that the brain can possibly continue to rebuild the same structure over time and not destroy itself.”

Hengen is determined to find out. But to do that, he must collect a lot of data. And by a lot, we mean 20 terabytes a day — more than any single lab at Washington University.

“We’re generating a Netflix-sized database every month,” Hengen said.

In the latest installation of WashU Spaces, Hengen offers a tour of his groundbreaking neuroscience lab.

“There is nothing traditional here,” Hengen said. “We have raised a lot of eyebrows.”

Hengen modeled his lab after the collaborative work spaces he visited at Google, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Microsoft Corp. and the University of Washington. He returned to Washington University committed to key design features — movable furniture, a collaboration space that is separate from the wet lab and really good coffee.

“At Brandeis, my desk was in a wet lab, which meant closed-toe shoes, no food, no coffee, nothing,” Hengen said. “So, several times a week, we would go get coffee — a process that would take forever. The human capital that you are losing is huge. Here, you can have a good coffee or, at 7 p.m. on a Friday, have a beer. It’s all about having dynamic spaces that are modular, collaborative and comfortable.”

When Hengen’s researchers aren’t slurping coffee or debating homeostatic mechanisms, they are writing code, dissecting data — or sleeping in adjoining quiet workspace.

“Part of the reason we picked these couches is that they are comfortable for sleeping,” Hengen said. “There is never foot traffic through this space, so we know, as a group, that if someone is in here, leave them alone.”

Barrage of data

For years, scientists have collected data from a single neuron by inserting a super-thin wire into the brain of a mouse. The technique earned scientists Erwin Neher and Bert Sakmann the 1991 Nobel Prize. The Hengen lab takes the work to the next level by collecting information from thousands of neurons at once.  

And with that leap comes a barrage of data. To accommodate the 20 terabytes of data the Hengen lab collects every day, as well as the future needs of other university labs, crews had to lay down fiber-optic connections along Forest Park to connect the Danforth Campus to high-performance computing clusters at the School of Medicine.

“Typically, scientists record for a few hours,” Hengen said. “What we’ve figured out how to do is record for weeks at a time so we can figure out how the same neuron integrates information through sleep, through wake, through light, through dark, across aging, across disease progression.”

All of that data is captured by a super-sensitive recording device. Wire mesh, known as a Faraday cage, has been placed around the device and into the drywall to guarantee that no stray electrical signals from, say, a text message or phone call corrupt the data.

“We are recording microvolts, and in order to do that, you have to isolate the external world,” Hengen said.

Hengen’s lab boasts its own makerspace with a laser cutter, laser printer and electronic workstations to build custom plexiglass mouse enclosures that can be equipped with sensitive monitoring devices. The big upfront investment will save hundreds of thousands of dollars in the long run, he said.

“There will be cameras with night vision and devices that detect pressure changes when the animal moves. We’ll also know when a mouse goes to its water bottle or food,” Hengen said. “All of that will be connected to computers with artificial intelligence that can tell us how the animal is interacting, what it’s doing. It’s all automated.”

Studies show that people with the most experience or the loudest voices tend to drive conversations. Hengen did not want that for his lab, and he brought in Fisher Qua, who has helped NASA and other organizations create a non-hierarchical culture. Hengen’s team has a voice in all decisions, from lab coats (his team likes tie-dyed) to computer code.

“It is very important to me that there is no hierarchy,” Hengen said. “Which is, of course, paradoxical because I am using my authority to say I don’t want authority.” 

What does Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton keep on his desk? How big are the blueprints for the east end construction site? How does the University Libraries Preservation Lab strip electrical tape from damaged books? Find out at WashU Spaces.

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John Doris, professor of philosophy and philosophy-neuroscience-psychology

When is the last time a stereotype popped into your mind? If you are like most people, the authors included, it happens all the time. That doesn’t make you a racist, sexist, or whatever-ist. It just means your brain is working properly, noticing patterns, and making generalizations. But the same thought processes that make people smart can also make them biased. This tendency for stereotype-confirming thoughts to pass spontaneously through our minds is what psychologists call implicit bias. It sets people up to overgeneralize, sometimes leading to discrimination even when people feel they are being fair.

Studies of implicit bias have recently drawn ire from both right and left. For the right, talk of implicit bias is just another instance of progressives seeing injustice under every bush. For the left, implicit bias diverts attention from more damaging instances of explicit bigotry. Debates have become heated, and leapt from scientific journals to the popular press. Along the way, some important points have been lost. We highlight two misunderstandings that anyone who wants to understand implicit bias should know about.

First, much of the controversy centers on the most famous implicit bias test, the Implicit Association Test (IAT). A majority of people taking this test show evidence of implicit bias, suggesting that most people are implicitly biased even if they do not think of themselves as prejudiced. Like any measure, the test does have limitations. The stability of the test is low, meaning that if you take the same test a few weeks apart, you might score very differently. And the correlation between a person’s IAT scores and discriminatory behavior is often small.

Read the full piece in Scientific American

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The police shooting earlier this month of Stephon Clark in his grandmother’s Sacramento backyard has renewed protests over officer-involved deaths of unarmed black men, but research led by Washington University in St. Louis suggests young Hispanic men may face an even greater risk of being killed by police, especially in mixed-income neighborhoods with large Latino populations.

“When it comes to police shootings, the color of your neighborhood may matter as much as the color of your skin,” said lead researcher Odis Johnson, associate professor of education and of sociology, both in Arts & Sciences at Washington University. “Our database analysis shows that the racial and economic demographics of the neighborhood you’re in can be a powerful factor in your odds of being killed during an interaction with law enforcement.”

The study is the second in a series of reports from the ongoing Fatal Interactions with Police (FIPS) research project, which includes contributions from public health and biostatistics experts at hospitals and universities, including Saint Louis University, New York University and Harvard University. The first report in the series, which found that nearly 60 percent of black women killed by police were unarmed at the time of the interaction, also is available at the FIPS website.

The FIPS database includes details on about 1,700 fatal interactions with police that occurred in jurisdictions across the United States during a 20-month time period from May 2013 to January 2015. It estimates the demographic odds of a fatality occurring during an interaction with police based on the location of the interaction and the characteristics of the likely responding law enforcement agency.

Key findings from the first report include:

• In neighborhoods with high levels of income inequality, such as poor areas undergoing gentrification, all males of color face a higher risk of being killed during interactions with police. Hispanic men face an even higher risk than black men in these settings.
• Ethnically diverse neighborhoods with low levels of segregation pose a dramatically lower risk of fatal police interaction for black males.
• Highly-segregated neighborhoods with little diversity pose a higher risk of police-related fatalities for Hispanic men.
• Hispanic males were over 2.6 times as likely as others to be killed by officers from agencies with relatively higher percentages of Hispanic officers.
• The odds of a civil suit being filed in response to a fatal interaction with police is 2.6 times higher in cases where the person killed was a man of color, and nearly six times higher in cases where the person killed was a black man.
• Black males thought to be mentally ill or under the influence of drugs or alcohol are less likely than other black males to be killed during an interaction with police; there is no significant drop in risk for Hispanic males whose mental abilities appear to be compromised.

The project plans to issue a third report on related findings next month as it prepares to host a national symposium, titled “The Color of Policing Symposium (COPS): Youth, Education and Activism,” April 19-20 at Washington University.

“This research project examines the factors that make males of color more likely than their white and female counterparts to be killed by police,” Johnson said. “The bottom line from this latest analysis is that the demographics of the neighborhood where you live, work and walk the streets can make a big difference in the odds that a young black or Hispanic male will have a fatal interaction with law enforcement.”

The current findings suggest that the odds of fatal police actions are influenced not only by the racial and economic demographics of a city and its neighborhoods, but also by the demographics of the local law enforcement agencies that serve these neighborhoods.

“Neighborhoods characterized by racial isolation and large disparities in income and opportunity trigger heavier policing and the use of higher levels of force from officers, contributing to the greater relative odds that males of color will have fatal interactions with police,” Johnson said.

Much more than a listing of fatal police interactions around the country, the FIPS database also contains a wealth of related demographic and law enforcement data that allows the deaths to be analyzed in the context of local conditions. Database researchers gathered background on each case through an array of public records, including media accounts, death certificates and obituaries.

In addition to U.S. Census statistics on the location where the fatality occurred, FIPS includes data about local law enforcement practices and police staffing drawn from the Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Survey (LEMAS), and crime statistics from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program.

Collected by the Bureau of Justice Statistics from about 2,800 state and local law enforcement agencies, the LEMAS data offers details on a wide range of topics: agency responsibilities, operating expenditures, job functions of sworn and civilian employees, officer salaries and special pay, demographic characteristics of officers, weapons and armor policies, education and training requirements, computers and information systems, vehicles, special units and community policing activities.

The FIPS database project was supported by Public Health Cubed Seed Funding from the Institute of Public Health at Washington University. Other researchers involved in the project include Cassandra Arroyo-Johnson, assistant professor of surgery at Washington University School of Medicine (WUSM); Melody Goodman, interim chair the Department of Biostatistics at New York University; Marcello Pagano, professor statistical computing at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health; Keon L. Gilbert, associate professor in the College of Public Health and Social Justice at Saint Louis University; Christopher St. Vil, assistant professor of social work at SUNY Buffalo; David de la Cerda, doctoral student at Wake Forest University; and Nicole Ackerman, a statistical data analyst in the WUSM Public Health Sciences Division.

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Bryce Sadtler, assistant professor of chemistry in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, has been awarded a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award by the National Science Foundation. His grant, expected to total more than $610,000 over the next five years, is for research to identify the structural characteristics that make some catalysts better than others for harvesting energy from the sun.

Sadtler is developing microscopy methods to watch individual, light-driven reactions as they occur on single nanocrystal photocatalysts. This will enable Sadtler and his research group to study why some atomic sites on the surface of nanocrystals are particularly active for catalysis.

Read more in The Ampersand.

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Raymond E. Arvidson, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, will receive the Weidenbaum Center Award for Excellence Medal. The award will be given at a ceremony held during the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy annual dinner April 2 and honors individuals who have made major contributions to both scholarship and public service. 

Arvidson, who is also director of the Earth and Planetary Remote Sensing Laboratory in the McDonnell Center for Space Sciences, is an interdisciplinary scientist focused on teaching and research about current and past environments on Earth, Mars and Venus.

He is the deputy principal investigator for the highly successful Mars Exploration Rovers (Spirit and Opportunity), and he has been instrumental in developing and implementing both orbital and landed missions to the planets. He is a science team member and mobility specialist for the Mars Science Laboratory Curiosity Rover that has been exploring Mars since August 2012.

Arvidson is also the director of the NASA Planetary Data System Geosciences Node, helping make NASA data available to the worldwide research community. He is a fellow of the Geological Society of America and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) and received the AGU Whipple Award and the Lester Stroud Award from the Society of Applied Spectroscopy.

He has also been honored with the Missouri Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, received three NASA Public Service Medals and several dozen NASA citations for excellence, and has received several awards from Washington University research and teaching excellence.

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The history of medicine is “embedded in the DNA of contemporary medical science and medical practice,” said Rebecca Messbarger, a cultural historian of early modern medicine and director of medical humanities in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. “In order to know who we are and what we’re doing, we absolutely have to know where we came from.”

In this video, Messbarger — who also serves as professor of Italian, of history, of art history and of women, gender and sexuality studies, all in Arts & Sciences — discusses the importance of the medical humanities as well as her own research into the life and work of Anna Morandi Manzolini (1714-1774).

The subject of Messbarger’s book “The Lady Anatomist” (2010), Morandi “defied low social status, limited formal education and all of those biases against her sex to become one of the most important anatomists of her age,” Messbarger said.

“Catherine the Great was obsessed with her. Pope Benedict the 14th was her primary patron.”

Today, Morandi is remembered for her striking anatomical wax models and for her work on the sensory and reproductive organs.

“The female body had always been seen as — in every part and facet — driven toward reproduction, the reproduction of the human species,” Messbarger said. Morandi “looks at the male body as having the same reproductive imperative.

“That is pretty extraordinary for a woman whose primary patron is also the pope.”

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When fossil fuels are burned, carbon dioxide (CO2) is emitted. As the gas rises and becomes trapped in the atmosphere, it retains heat as part of a process called the greenhouse effect. The increased temperatures associated with the greenhouse effect can cause melting ice caps, higher sea levels and a loss of natural habitat for plant and animal species.

Environmental scientists trying to mitigate the effects of CO2 have experimented with injecting it deep underground, where it becomes trapped. These trials have mainly taken place in sandstone aquifers, however, the injected CO2 primarily remains present as a bubble that can return to the surface if is there are fracture in the capping formation. A different approach using basalt flows as injection sites — chiefly at the CarbFix site in Iceland and in Washington state — has yielded dramatic results. Metals in basalt have the ability to transform CO2 into a solid inert mineral in a matter of months. While the new method holds promise, the underground injections can be imprecise, difficult to track and measure.

Now, new research by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis sheds light on what happens underground when CO2 is injected into basalt, illustrating precisely how effective the volcanic rock could be as an abatement agent for CO2 emissions. The research, led by Daniel Giammar, the Walter E. Browne Professor of Environmental Engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, was conducted in collaboration with researchers at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Philip Skemer, associate professor of earth and planetary sciences in Arts & Sciences at Washington University.

“In a field site, you inject the carbon dioxide in, and it’s a very open system,” Giammar said. “You can’t get a good constraint in terms of a capacity estimate. You know you made some carbonate from the CO2, but you don’t really know how much. In the lab, we have well-defined boundaries.”

To obtain a clearer, quantifiable look at carbon trapping rates in basalt, Giammar collected samples of the rock from Washington state, where researchers previously injected a thousand tons of CO2 gas deep underground into a basalt flow. He placed the rocks in small reactors that resemble slow cookers to simulate underground conditions, and then injected CO2 to test the variables involved in the carbonization process.

“We reacted it at similar pressure and temperature conditions to what they had in the field, except we do all of ours in a small sealed vessel,” Giammar said.  “So we know how much carbon dioxide went in and we know exactly where all of it went. We can look at the entire rock afterwards and see how much carbonate was formed in that rock. “

The lab kept the basalt in the pressurizers and followed up, using 3-D imaging to analyze their pore spaces at six weeks, 20 weeks and 40 weeks. They were able to watch moment to moment as the CO2 precipitated into mineral, the exact voids within the basalt it filled, and the precise spots in the rock where the carbonization process began.

Once all of the data were collected and analyzed, Giammar and his team predicted 47 kilograms of CO2 can be converted into mineral inside one cubic meter of basalt. This estimate can now be used as a baseline to scale up, quantifying how much CO2 can effectively be converted in entire areas of basalt flow.

“People have done surveys of available basalt flows,” Giammar said. “This data will help us determine which ones could actually be receptive to having CO2 injected into them, and then also help us to determine capacity. It’s big. It’s years and years worth of U.S. CO2 emissions.”

Giammar’s lab is currently sharing its results with colleagues at the University of Michigan, who will assist in developing a computational model to further help researchers to look for a solid fix for CO2 abatement. The Washington University researchers have also been invited to take part in the second phase of the U.S. Department of Energy’s Carbon Storage Assurance Facility Enterprise, or CarbonSAFE, which investigates new technologies for CO2 abatement.

Wei Xiong, Rachel K. Wells, Jake A. Horner, Herbert T. Schaef, Philip A. Skemer and Daniel E. Giammar. “CO2 Mineral Sequestration in Naturally Porous Basalt.” Environmental Science & Technology Letters, February 27, 2018. DOI: 10.1021/acs.eslett.8b00047

 This work was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy (DEFE0023382).

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“There’s a mystique about ancient Greek,” says Emeritus Trustee John H. Biggs. “It uses a different alphabet, the grammar is complex, the sentence structure can be difficult. I fell in love with the myths and stories, but I also saw it as a kind of intellectual development.”

Penelope Biggs, PhD ’74, was hooked by the Romans Cicero and Ovid. “I loved unraveling those long, winding sentences,” she says, “and then pulling them back together again.”

Over the last three decades, an international array of Greek and Latin scholars have come to Washington University in St. Louis thanks to the Biggs Family Residency in Classics. Established in 1990, the annual residency includes a week of formal lectures and presentations as well as informal interactions with students and faculty.

“There’s always something special,” says Catherine Keane, chair of Classics in Arts & Sciences. “Scholars will present something they’re working on, a paper or book-in-progress, which the group gets to discuss.

“There’s a real feeling of intimacy and community.”

Starting with Homer

Born and raised in Kirkwood, Missouri, John Biggs discovered Greek as a student at the Thomas Jefferson School.

“We started with Homer, which is the perfect choice for young boys,” Biggs remembers. He and a friend, armed with a stopwatch and a Greek-English lexicon, would compete to see who could translate the most lines in 15 minutes.

At Harvard, Biggs studied for two years with renowned classicist John H. Finley Jr., reading Pindar, and performed with future Biggs Resident Glen Bowersock in a Greek-language production of Sophocles’ Oedipus at Colonus. But the university’s most profound impact came at the start of his junior year, when Biggs and his roommate stood in a department hallway debating which of two courses on Catullus to take.

“Penelope walked in,” Biggs remembers with a smile. “And I thought, OK. That’s decisive.”

After graduation (John from Harvard in 1958, Penelope from Radcliffe in 1959), the couple returned to St. Louis and John ascended through the ranks at the General American Life Insurance Co. Penelope earned her master’s degree and doctorate in comparative literature from Washington University, and she published on topics such as the depiction of disease in Sophocles’ Ajax, Philoctetes and Trachiniae.

In 1977, John came to Washington University as vice chancellor for finance and administration, and in 1983, he earned a doctorate in economics. He later served as chief executive officer for the investment company TIAA-CREF. Penelope, meanwhile, joined the faculty at Lindenwood College (now University), teaching Greek mythology and Latin.

“Several students were women about my age,” she recalls with a laugh. “They liked Medea a lot.”

Exciting scholarship

“Classics is a great place to develop all those traditional liberal arts skills: writing, presenting, discussing and close analysis,” Keane says. “Our students are ambitious and driven but also well-rounded.”

Tim Moore, the John and Penelope Biggs Distinguished Professor of Classics and director of undergraduate studies, adds that, in recent years, the field has begun to explore key questions relating to social history and the lives of ordinary people.

“Gender has emerged as a wonderfully interesting topic,” Moore says. “Feminist scholars have brought new attention to the experiences of women and explored how gender in the ancient world differed from what we might expect.

“There’s also a new intersection between literary and material culture,” Moore continues. “It used to be, one either studied ancient texts or went and dug in the dirt. Today, we talk to each other more, and that’s led to a lot of really exciting scholarship.”

The Biggs reunion

This spring, 14 former Biggs residents will return to campus for the Biggs Family Residency Reunion.

The three-day event, which takes place April 11, 12 and 13, will feature new presentations on a wide variety of topics. Mary T. Boatwright of Duke University will investigate the standing of Imperial women under Roman law. Harvard’s Kathleen Coleman will contrast depictions of the material world in Statius’ poetry with surviving objects from the early Roman Empire.

Stanford’s Josiah Ober will discuss the origins of democracy and its resilience against both populist and elitist challenges. James G. Lennox from the University of Pittsburgh will examine the centrality of questions and answers to Aristotle’s thought. New York University’s David Konstan will explore differences between the Biblical conception of sin and the ancient Greek “hamartia,” which meant “error” or “fault,” as in Aristotle’s “tragic flaw.”

Other topics will range from Zeus cults and Hellenistic Jewish writers to the birth of archaeology and how aerial photography is expanding the field today.

“Scholars are always starting new conversations,” Keane says. “There’s fine, focused work on particular sites and particular texts, as well as big questions that reach back-and-forth across the disciplines. How do we interpret sources? What was Thucydides up to?

“And why does democracy matter?”

Breakfast with Ovid

Today, the poems of Pindar, which John studied with Prof. Finley at Harvard, remain part of his morning regimen. Penelope recently returned to Ovid’s Metamorphoses.

“Frequently over breakfast, Penelope will say, ‘you won’t believe what Ovid did with this story,’” chuckles John. “He has all these transformations…”

“I like Ovid best when he’s being funny,” Penelope agrees. She points to the poet’s treatment of Io, one of Jupiter’s mortal lovers, whom the jealous Juno transforms into a heifer. “Io’s father goes into this lament. ‘And I was hoping for grandchildren!’”

Concludes John: “I can’t believe that Ovid’s audience didn’t smile.”

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Make a more ethical workplace

“Organizations can affect ethical ­behavior through things like rules and ­monitoring, with incentives for ethical behavior and ­consequences for unethical behavior. These are real, and they are powerful. But managers also need to focus on norms and culture — what some people call an ‘ethical climate,’ i.e., ‘the way we do things around here.’ Employees quickly learn how things really work and how seriously ethical guidelines are taken within a given work context.”

— Stuart Bunderson is the George and Carol Bauer Professor of ­Organizational Ethics and Governance and co-director of the Bauer ­Leadership Center at Olin Business School.

Be aware of self-serving biases

“We love to think that bad people do bad things. But when I give talks, I always discuss my own experiences with PTSD and chemo brain, and how easy it was for someone like me with a strong moral upbringing to swerve toward ­malfeasance. We’re all glad that we aren’t bad people until we wake up one ­morning and say, ‘What have I done?’ Our brains are ­hard-wired ­toward ­self-serving bias. A whole slew of ­psychological biases ­facilitates our bad behavior, helping us justify, rationalize, selectively forget and attribute in ways that are self-serving.”

— Lamar Pierce is professor of strategy at Olin Business School and academic director of the joint Olin/Brookings Institution Executive Master of ­Science in Leadership program. His research focuses in part on business ethics and incentives.

Ethical patient care

“The Institute of Medicine published a ­report stating that the cost of unnecessary ­treatments in the United States runs in the hundreds of ­millions of dollars. I wouldn’t say that’s because doctors are being unethical. Many times, doctors and patients think, ‘better safe than sorry.’ But that’s assuming that the benefit is always in favor of treatment or advanced screenings, and I do think that there are some costs. The most serious cost is overdiagnosis and overtreatment. I would say that acting ethically as a clinician means talking with patients about both the costs and the benefits of a treatment or test.”

— Anya Plutynski is an associate professor of philosophy. Her research interests include philosophy of medicine and biomedical ethics.

Ethicists don’t offer easy answers

“Philosophers distinguish between theories
of the good, what makes a life better or worth
living, and what sorts of things are morally correct.
As a ­generalization, what’s good for you is thought to be a ­different question from what’s morally good or right. A hedonistic theory of the good would have no issue with ­living a ­maximally pleasurable life. Whether a life of hedonistic pleasure was morally good would turn on what ethical theory you’re ­looking at. Utilitarians might see this as morally good; Kant would ­disagree. And in ­Aristotelian ethics, pleasure isn’t what ­ultimately matters; rather, it’s developing virtuous traits like honesty and generosity.”

— Charlie Kurth is an assistant professor of philosophy.

How to make the ‘right’ decision

“There are always biases that can affect our decision making, for example, by not considering all the relevant factors or by discounting evidence too quickly. In order to avoid biases, it’s ­important to collect ­evidence in a thorough and ­systematic way, to rely on facts rather than first impressions, and to make sure positive and negative factors receive appropriate ­weighting and consideration. It can be helpful to run one’s reasoning by others, who might be able to spot errors and omissions in one’s weighing of the options.”

— Julia Staffel is an assistant professor of philosophy and specializes in epistemology and philosophical logic.

The logic of fairness

“The question of fair resource allocation is a difficult one. Take a simple example: You have two children, and you have saved money to pay for their college education. One fair way to divide the funds would be to give an equal amount to each child. However, suppose that one of the children wants to go to a more expensive school than the other. Perhaps it is more fair to give each of the children the education they most want, rather than giving one child more money for college than they need and the other one less than they need. The main message is that one must be aware that there might be more than one way of allocating resources that could be considered fair, so one should map out the possibilities before settling on one of them.”

— Julia Staffel

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Washington University brings excellent speakers to campus every year to share ideas and new perspectives with students and the community. Here are a few of the speakers from the past year.

To keep up-to-date on speakers on campus be sure to check out the Assembly Series page and like the Assembly Series on Facebook.

“Running for president was extraordinary. You get to meet the American people across the country and understand what it is that makes us such a unique and powerful country. The greatness of America is not just our scale and our economic might and our military might. It is also our goodness. … This is a nation that is great and good.”

— Former presidential candidate Mitt Romney speaking on campus Feb. 27, 2017

“An institution is like an old garment: It has acquired the shape of those who tend to wear it, such that it is easier to wear if you have that shape.”

— Sara Ahmed, a feminist writer and  scholar, speaking Oct. 20, 2017

“Free speech, I would argue, is the liberty that makes all other liberties possible within the constitution.”

— National Review Institute Senior Fellow David French speaking on campus Oct. 11, 2017
(see the video on the Show Me Institute website)

“I passionately support any vulnerable community in this nation. I stand with them; I lend them my voice.”

— Khizr Khan, a gold-star father and speaker at the 2016 Democratic National Convention, speaking Nov. 3, 2017, on a panel on Islamaphobia

“Climate change is not an environmental issue … We care about polar bears; we care about rainforests. But it’s really a ­humanitarian issue. It’s an issue that climate change impacts fall disproportionately on the poor.”

— Paleoclimatologist Bronwen Konecky speaking at an Assembly Series panel on              climate change led by “Science Friday” host Ira Flatow, Sept. 18, 2017

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In 1967, New York City forced nearly 2,000 low-income families out of a 20-acre area on the Lower East Side to make way for the Seward Park Extension Urban Renewal Area (SPURA), a $50 million project that promised new, affordable housing units that the displaced families could move back into. Of the six planned buildings, only two were built, and the area has languished ever since.

But Washington University alumnus Paul Pariser, AB ’76, is helping make good on that half-century-old promise, taking the blighted area of Manhattan in a chic — and affordable — new direction.

Pariser is the co-chief executive officer and co-founder of Taconic Investment Partners, a real estate development and investment firm based in New York City. Since its creation in 1997, Taconic has acquired, developed and repositioned more than 12 million square feet of commercial and residential space in New York.

“Taconic strives for, in the ideal, extraordinary vision and ­creativity,” Pariser says, “and to create returns that are excellent for our investors and to service the community in which we  operate.”

Essex Crossing, the $1.5 billion development being built on the old SPURA site, is one of Taconic’s biggest and most exciting projects. The development will bring hundreds of thousands of square feet of office and retail space, as well as 1,000 new ­apartments. Half of the apartment units planned in the new development will be permanent, affordable housing for lower-income residents and senior citizens.

Pariser brings nearly 40 years of experience in the real estate development business to the Essex Crossing project. He ­graduated from Washington University with a biology degree, which might seem unusual for someone who ended up in real estate development.

“My actual major was in an area called ethology, which is animal behavior, and I thought it was a great stepping stone into New York real estate,” he jokes. “When I was younger, I truly didn’t know what I was going to do for a living. I didn’t go to college with a specific plan. I went with a view that I was going to have fun and learn and mature.”

He found his calling as an MBA student at Columbia University. For an assignment in one of his classes, Pariser and a friend invested in a plot of land in Lake Placid, New York, with the hope of turning it into housing for the 1980 Winter Olympics.

“I certainly did well in the class, but moreover, I wound up learning a lot. The investment exposed me to real estate and got me excited by real estate,” Pariser says.

He joined real estate investment management company Jones Lang Wooten in 1978 and later served as the president and CEO of Balfour Holdings, which he helped sell in 1997. From there, he created Taconic.

“Paul brings experience and know-how to the team. He digs in and focuses while keeping a global perspective,” says Sandy Loewentheil, AB ’76, the chairman of L+M Development Partners, a collaborator on the Essex Crossing project.

Both Loewentheil and Pariser serve on WashU’s Arts & Sciences National Council, an ­advisory ­committee to the dean. The two met as students ­during a regular off-campus basketball game and have stayed in touch ever since.

Essex Crossing is the first project the two have worked on together as real estate developers. Taconic and L+M, as well as BFC Partners, won the bid to develop the area in 2013.

“Paul has been a pleasure to partner with. Our firms and ­partners have meshed really nicely. I believe more collaborations will follow,” Loewentheil says.

In the meantime, Essex Crossing will be home to an expanded Essex Street Market, a ­public food market. And Market Line — the building that will house the market — will become one of the world’s greatest public markets, at 150,000 square feet, when it opens in 2018.

The full development, when complete in 2024, will also include a movie theater, bowling alley, medical center and even a ­photography museum.

The post The real deal appeared first on The Source.

This year, Mary Shelley’s novel Frankenstein turns 200. Washington University is celebrating the bicentennial with special events, conferences, film screenings and more. One of the organizers, Corinna Treitel, associate professor of history, is most excited about the conversations Frankenstein can spark.

“I thought celebrating the bicentennial would be a really great opportunity for a university like ours to create conversations between people who don’t normally talk to each other,” Treitel says. “The novel is often drawn into discussions about science and social responsibility, but it’s also a foundational text for thinking about otherness.”

Medical ethics are at the crux of the novel’s central story about Victor Frankenstein, a college ­student who decides to reanimate dead tissue. When he is successful, Frankenstein is horrified by what he has created and abandons his creature.

The creature is a quintessential “other.” Despite not having parents, he teaches himself language and civility, but people are so horrified by his appearance that their first response is to run away or try to kill him. The creature becomes an outcast and a ­murderer, determined to destroy his creator’s life.

“The novel is really about failure of inclusion,” Treitel says.

“[Shelley] created an outsider figure that can be read onto lots of different marginalized groups,” adds Amy Pawl, senior lecturer in English, who along with Treitel created and taught the interdisciplinary course “Frankenstein: Origins and Afterlives” in fall 2017. “The novel raises questions of ­sympathy for that outsider creature and the responsibility that the ­dominant culture needs to take for creating these ­awful positions for people to exist in,” Pawl says.

This topic of identity and inclusion was among the reasons the novel was selected for WashU’s 2017 ­Common Reading Program. All first-year students were asked to read the book and discuss it at the beginning of the 2017 fall semester.

In small groups, students used the novel to discuss current events, identity politics and the background of the young author. (Mary Shelley famously wrote Frankenstein as a teenager after she’d run off with and gotten pregnant by the ­renowned — and married — poet Percy ­Bysshe Shelley.) The book also served as a jumping-off point for a one-credit identity-literacy class offered to first-year students. 

This year, students are competing to create a new Frankenstein for the modern age. Treitel and the ­Center for the Humanities are sponsoring a ­competition, in which students can write or ­create an art piece that reimagines the classic tale.

Treitel also organized a conference in October 2017, “Frankenstein at 200,” that dealt with the novel and its “afterlives” in popular culture. The daylong event included three panels that discussed how ­Frankenstein has been retold through the ­African-American experience, how the monster ­inspired the creation of disability studies, and how the novel is still shaping art today, among other topics.

“Historians are always interested in change over time,” Treitel says. “This is a novel that has been drawn into conversations in very different kinds of ways over the past 200 years. I thought it would be interesting to see how scholars across a variety of ­disciplines were talking about Frankenstein right now.”

Another conference, “The Curren(t)cy of ­Frankenstein,” will be held Sept. 28–30, 2018, at the School of Medicine. Organized by Rebecca ­Messbarger — ­director of the Medical Humanities program and professor of Italian, history, art history, and women, gender and sexuality studies — this ­conference will focus specifically on the novel’s ­relevance for contemporary medical practice.

One speaker will be Luke Dittrich, who wrote the award-winning book, Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness and Family Secrets, about the rise of the lobotomy. Part of the book is about Dittrich ­coming to terms with the fact that his own grandfather performed the controversial procedure on c­ountless patients.

“Dittrich’s talk will be about the power of medical and scientific innovation. But like Frankenstein, it will raise questions about the responsibilities and the ethics that must undergird that same innovation,” Messbarger says.

The three-day event will also feature a ­Frankenstein performance piece, a demonstration of alchemical experiments and a panel of experts from the sciences and the humanities on the ­meaning of the novel for medicine today.

The issue of science and ethics is perhaps even more pressing today than in Shelley’s time. This September, Jennifer Doudna, a professor of chemistry as well as of biochemistry and molecular ­biology at the University of California, Berkeley, will talk about the technology she helped create, CRISPR/Cas9 genome editing, which allows scientists to manipulate genes. A powerful tool in curing disease, it also raises questions about ethics. Worried about what editing the human genome could mean, Doudna called for a moratorium on the clinical use of gene editing in 2015.

Although science can’t reanimate dead tissue as Frankenstein did, human beings are moving ever closer to the intelligent design previously ­ascribed only to the gods. As Nick Dear, the playwright who recently staged Mary Shelley’s ­Frankenstein in ­London, said when he came to campus Sept. 6, 2017: “Mary Shelley was writing, almost without ­appreciating it, a creation myth for the science age. [Creating the monster] involves solely the skills of humankind. And that’s why I think it stays with us now, because God doesn’t play a very big part in our rationalization about the world we live in.”

Treitel saw the questions that this creation story raised as extremely pertinent when she read it as an undergraduate studying chemistry, the same field that Frankenstein studied.

“The questions [the novel] made me ask concerned the vexed relations of science and society,” Treitel wrote in an article about the bicentennial. “Should scientists dare to alter living matter? I knew, of course, that the question was moot: They dare; they do. But more questions followed: How do we do such research ethically? What are our responsibilities to the organisms produced? Who should be involved in asking and answering such questions?”

The Frankenstein bicentennial won’t, of course, ­answer all of these questions, but the novel is still a ­useful tool in making us ask the tough questions about ourselves, our ethics and our future.

For more information visit Frankenstein200 and Frankenstein 200 on The Source.

The Kemper Art Museum hosted an art exhibit of images related to Frankenstein in October 2017. Below are images from the exhibition.

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Four years ago, when Steven Collens, AB ’93, thought about the organizational chart for his new company, only one name appeared on it: his own. Collens had plenty of prior experience in government and business — even at another startup — but never as CEO.

“I had never run anything before,” Collens says.

Collens had been tapped to build and lead a company called MATTER — a startup for other startups. The founding vision was to create a place to encourage health-care innovation in the Chicago area. MATTER member companies are developing technology to help deaf people enjoy music and using video-game technology to train medical professionals, among other innovations. But back in 2013, there was a lot of work ahead before the company would become home to the 200 health-care startups there today.

Collens, who grew up just north of Chicago in Evanston, Illinois, was eager to get out of town for college. Washington ­University’s Collegiate Gothic architecture and green lawns made an impression on him, and he enrolled. After graduating in 1993, Collens headed to Washington, D.C., where he worked on Capitol Hill. Several years ­later, he returned to Chicago and earned an MBA at ­Northwestern University.

Collens started his first business while working for the ­health- care company Abbott. He teamed up with a professional dancer and chiropractor to provide health-care coordination for dancers. “We did just about everything wrong that you can do when ­starting a business,” Collens says. After three years, in 2009, they called it quits.

But Collens would soon get a chance to put the lessons of that startup failure to work. In 2011, as senior vice president of ­Pritzker Group, a private investment firm, he was asked to establish a ­co-working space that could help create a more connected tech community in Chicago and incubate new businesses.

Collens had worked in several industries, but the tech world was uncharted territory. He threw himself into the community to learn as much as he could about the industry and the needs of entrepreneurs.

Collens and his co-founders named the co-working space 1871 as a nod to the rebuilding of Chicago after the Great Chicago Fire that destroyed much of the city that same year.

“It was a startup, so it was inherently a mess,” Collens recalls, laughing. He worked seven days a week for long hours but loved it. “It was one of the most fun things I’ve ever worked on,” he says.

In 2012, 1871 opened its doors, and hundreds of applicants vied for space in the new startup incubator from day one.

About a year later, Collens met entrepreneurs Andrew Cittadine and David Schonthal, who were convinced of Chicago’s potential as a hub for health-care innovation. Large pharmaceutical and health-insurance companies are headquartered in the city, which is also home to several teaching hospitals and national medical ­professional organizations. But much like the Chicago tech scene before 1871 opened, no forum existed where the city’s health-care resources and talent could come together. Collens, Cittadine and other founders created MATTER to solve that problem.

“Steve’s drive and vision from 1871 were critical to the success of MATTER,” Cittadine says.

The U.S. health-care system is sprawling and rife with inefficiency, but it’s difficult to spot opportunities without direct access to
hospital facilities or insurance companies.

“Unfortunately, it can be easy to build a product that has no market,” Collens says. So MATTER connects its larger institutional partners with member companies to help guide innovation. And MATTER took things a step further by building mock doctors’ offices and inpatient facilities so developers could better understand how their products would be used in real life. 

Since it opened in 2015, MATTER member companies have employed 2,200 people and developed health-care products used by 76 million patients.

Collens says he doesn’t have any plans to leave MATTER to launch yet another business. But he doesn’t rule out the idea completely.

“I love new challenges,” he says. “It motivates everything I’m doing.”

The post A start for startups appeared first on The Source.

With a PhD in business, you might not expect Chris Boerner, AB ’93,  to be fighting cancer. Yet thanks to his job as head of international markets at Bristol-Myers Squibb, a leading biopharmaceutical company, he works to bring life-saving immuno-oncology cancer drugs to international markets. Also in his free time, Boerner participates in two bike rides that raise more than $1 million annually for cancer research.

When he started out as an undergraduate, though, Boerner’s focus was neither business nor biopharmacology. Not actually knowing what to study, he decided to major in history. Taking a class with Douglass North, who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 1993, expanded Boerner’s worldview, and he decided to double major in history and economics.

“What I remember most fondly about WashU was that there was a real commitment to diversity of thinking,” Boerner says. He also took a class team-taught by the late Thomas Eagleton, a U.S. senator from Missouri and the Thomas F. Eagleton University Professor of Public Affairs and Political Science, and the late Murray Weidenbaum, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor and a conservative economist.

“They would analyze subjects from both a conservative and liberal point of view,” Boerner says. “And then leave it up to the students to formulate their own ideas.”

When Boerner graduated in 1993, he became an intern at Weidenbaum’s Center for the Study of American Business, now the Weidenbaum Center on the Economy, Government, and Public Policy. Boerner also did some consulting in St. Louis before enrolling at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley in 1996.

While working toward his PhD, Boerner decided to write his dissertation about the pharmaceutical industry. “I’d run across an article, oddly, about Bristol-Myers Squibb,” Boerner says. “And it talked about how BMS was exceptional at the time, developing and commercializing drugs in the oncology space. I began asking why it was that Bristol was so much better than other companies at that.”

He focused his research on product development and pharmaceuticals and after graduating decided to work in the industry. He took a job with McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. Although McKinsey works in many industries, Boerner’s clients were primarily leading pharmaceutical companies.

“I just became fascinated by the work that was being done and by the impact the drugs that these companies were developing could have on patients,” Boerner says. In 2002, he took a job with Genentech, a leading biotechnology company, to work in its commercial group focused on oncology. He spent eight years there, where he held several commercial roles, including director of marketing for Avastin, a chemotherapy drug. While Boerner was at Genentech, the company went from having a small two-drug oncology portfolio to being one of the leaders in the field.

“I was very fortunate to be able to work on some of the most exciting science in oncology at the time,” Boerner says. “I was interested in oncology specifically because I, like everyone, have had a number of family members who were either living with cancer or who had died from cancer.”

After brief stints with smaller biotechnology startups, Boerner became president and head of the U.S. commercial business at Bristol-Myers Squibb in February 2015.

Just a year before he started, oncology employees had decided to organize a massive fundraiser in support of Stand Up to Cancer called Coast 2 Coast 4 Cancer.

“These are employees who are educating physicians and customers every day about the advances taking place in immuno-oncology,” Boerner says. “But they felt there was more that they could contribute, and so they came up with the idea to organize a bike ride across the country to raise money for cancer research.”

Bristol-Myers Squibb provided the employees with coaches to help them get in shape for the 2,800-mile relay. Each team does a multi-day bike ride covering about 75 miles a day. The entire ride, which is held in September, takes about 20 days, and the course goes from the Pacific Ocean to the Atlantic. In 2017, there were 93 riders, and they raised more than $1 million in support of Stand Up To Cancer. This September, 109 Bristol-Myers Squibb employees will once again train for 5 months to relay across the United States on a quest to make more memories for cancer patients and their loved ones. This year, all funds raised will benefit the V Foundation and money raised will be matched dollar-for-dollar by Bristol-Myers Squibb (up to a $500,000).

“It’s a great ride,” Boerner says. “It’s probably one of the most moving and impactful things that I’ve done in my career, because every single one of those riders has a personal connection to cancer.”

In 2017, Boerner participated in the U.S. bike ride, then flew to Europe for a similarly styled fundraiser called Country to Country. This ride raises money for cancer programs outside of the United States. It was perfect for Boerner, who in October 2017 would become head of international markets and oversee all BMS business outside of the U.S.

For Boerner, fighting cancer is a global effort. “The way we are ultimately going to make progress against cancer is not by Bristol-Myers Squibb working alone,” he says. “It’s going to be in partnership with institutions around the country and around the world, where incredibly innovative research is taking place.”

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When Jane Hardesty Poole, AB ’61, was a young girl, her ­father taught her how to knit. The celebrated St. Louis ophthalmologist trained himself from a book. It was an unusual thing for a father to do in the 1940s. But John Hardesty, MD, was no ordinary man.

A longtime professor of ophthalmology at Saint Louis University, Hardesty pioneered the systemic use of epinephrine to treat glaucoma in 1934. He provided free eye care throughout the St. Louis region and advocated for laws to benefit the blind. And as a ­­member of the U.S. Army Medical Corps ­serving with the British Army’s Seaforth ­Highlanders during World War I, he risked his life to treat soldiers on the front lines and help plan the escape of several officers from a prisoner-of-war camp in Germany.

Poole adored her father. “My mother told me one of his patients came in and asked about me once,” she says. “My father replied that when he kissed my hand, I curled it up and said I was never going to wash it.”

Hardesty’s death in 1953, when Poole was 14, ­affected her deeply. But it wasn’t until years later that she realized how much he influenced her life’s path, particularly her decision to leave St. Louis and pursue a career instead of marriage after her graduation from Washington University — an unconventional choice at the time.

“My father provided the unconditional love that every child needs,” she says. “He gave me the confidence and courage to move to New York City with few friends, no job, no place to live and very little money. I hand it all to him.”

An adventurous life

In 1961, when Poole earned her bachelor’s degree in political science, about 6 percent of American women had completed four or more years of college. Most of her friends were married by age 20. Her mother insisted she finish her degree. “She wanted me to be able to take care of myself no matter what happened in life,” Poole says.

With her education complete, Poole sought excitement — and a job — in the Big Apple. Her first position as a salesperson at Saks Fifth Avenue came just as she was running out of money. She went on to work as an assistant to a senior editor at Glamour magazine and as a secretary at Merrill Lynch, where she passed the test to become a licensed stockbroker on her first try. The brokerage houses were not ready for women in the late ’60s, she says, so she moved on to an interior design firm.

“Although I never found the perfect career, I learned something valuable from every one of those jobs, which helped when I went to work as a realtor in the mid-1980s,” she says.

Poole loved being single in the city. Her busy ­social life included dinners, theater outings and galas. A Life magazine photo of her taken during this time is displayed in her Midtown Manhattan apartment.

“I went out with all kinds of people because they were interesting,” she says. “I had a terrific time.”

Although she had no intention of ­marrying until she was 40, Poole fell in love with F. ­Harrison Poole, an executive with Philip Morris. They ­married in 1972, when she was 33, and their daughter, Josephine, was born in 1976. Poole’s husband’s ­position as vice president and treasurer required him to travel across the country and to Europe, and she enjoyed accompanying him.

Poole’s passion for travel grew even further after she married her second husband, Robert Bendheim, a philanthropist and retired president of a textile manufacturing firm. Together, they toured countries around the globe. Since Bendheim’s death in 2009, Poole has taken many trips with friends.

Another passion, collecting 16th- and 17th-century Japanese Imari porcelain, was fueled by her travels. She acquired her first piece in Japan in 1971 and began expanding her collection in 1984 during ­excursions to London to scour antique shops. The hobby opened doors to friendships with antique dealers and museum curators. She has since donated 16 vases to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I’m thrilled and astounded that my pieces will be displayed in the museum,” says Poole, who was told she is the only American collecting this type of pottery.

A legacy of generosity

Poole’s philanthropy extends well beyond her ­porcelain. She contributed her father’s ­papers and military memorabilia to the Missouri ­History ­Museum. And she has made significant gifts to Ability Beyond, a nonprofit that provides residential ­living and ­employment programs and other services to adults with developmental disabilities. Her daughter resides in one of the agency’s group homes.

Just as she attributes her strength and ­courage to her father, Poole credits him for her ­generosity. “My father was known for helping patients who could not pay,” she says. “He gave freely of his time and resources. I like to think I got that from him.”

A desire to honor her father led her to establish the John F. Hardesty, MD, ­Distinguished ­Professorship in ­Ophthalmology and Visual ­Sciences at Washington University School of ­Medicine in 2011. In 2017, she made an ­additional $10 million ­commitment to ­support the department. In recognition, it will be ­renamed the John F. Hardesty, MD, ­Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at a ­dedication ceremony in September 2018.

These gifts have helped Poole reconnect with her alma mater. She is a member of Washington University’s New York Regional Cabinet, and she frequently attends university events in the city. She also hosts receptions for students from the McDonnell International Scholars Academy, who visit New York every other spring.

“I have known Jane for many years,” ­Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton says. “She is a tremendously warm and giving person who is deeply committed to her family. Her remarkable generosity in honor of her father will extend and preserve his legacy and benefit the School of Medicine for generations to come.”

Poole had intended to provide funds for the professorship through her estate but changed her mind during a meeting with ­Chancellor Wrighton in 2010. “I realized it would be more fun to pay tribute to my father while I was alive,” she says. “Nothing has given me more joy. It’s my way of celebrating a man who shaped my life and gave so much to others.”

Mary Lee is director of development communications.

The post Practicing generosity appeared first on The Source.

During his long career at Pixar ­Animation ­Studios, Chris Bernardi, AB ’85, has attended ­premieres for hit movies like Finding Nemo, Cars and ­Inside Out. But he was especially thrilled — and more than a bit nervous — to walk the red carpet Oct. 24, 2017, for the Mexico City ­premiere of Coco.

Bernardi was thrilled because Coco was his first film as set supervisor, a job that pushed him as both an ­artist and a coder. And Bernardi was nervous because he had ­supervised a team of 32 designers and hoped Mexican ­moviegoers would recognize the world they had created as both ­authentic and magical.

“We were in Mexico City for a movie about a ­Mexican family that takes place against the backdrop of Día de ­Muertos (the Day of the Dead), an important Mexican ­holiday,” Bernardi says. “We had worked very hard to get the movie right. By the end of the night, we knew that we had succeeded.”

The movie went on to bust box-office records in Mexico and was universally adored by American critics and moviegoers alike. And it won more than a dozen major awards, including the Golden Globe and Oscar for Best Animated Feature.

For those who have yet to see Coco, the movie is about a young boy named Miguel who wants to play guitar despite his family’s longtime ban on music. To prove his talent, he travels from his village, where his family makes shoes, to the “Land of the Dead,” where he meets his ancestors. Bernardi’s job was to build both worlds.

“We are the carpenters and masons of Pixar, but instead of working with wood and brick, we are using code and software,” Bernardi says. “Everything from the smallest piece of trash in the gutter to the tallest building to the sky itself was created by an artist.”

Bernardi decided to use a palette of warm colors for Miguel’s village and to illuminate the town with natural light. In contrast, the Land of the Dead is seen at night and features cool colors and artificial light. Indeed, one scene features 8 million points of light — a visual feat that required Bernardi to create custom code.

Bernardi says the look and feel of Coco was the ­product of both his imagination and several fact-finding trips to Mexico, where designers observed Day of the Dead celebrations in locations big and small. In the movie, for instance, the Land of the Dead is inspired by the hillside city of ­Guanajuato.

“At Pixar, research is vitally important. When I worked on Finding Nemo, I had to become certified in scuba, so I could see what a coral reef looked like. For Cars, I took a trip down Route 66, so I’d know what it’s like to stand in the desert heat when the sun goes down.

And for WALL-E, I got to go to …”

Outerspace?!

“No, a garbage dump,” he says.

Nothing and everything about Bernardi’s education at Washington University prepared him for this career. Bernardi, a native of Edwardsville, Illinois, majored in biology and had even taken the MCAT when he decided to write music for film. Like Miguel, Bernardi loved music. As a student, he played with the popular local band Big Fun and took electronic and computer music classes. Soon, his passion for making music for film morphed into an interest in making graphics for film.

“There’s actually a logic to that progression,” Bernardi says. “The underlying functions and math behind sound design and computer design are similar.”

The field was new, and the technology changed rapidly. To adapt, Bernardi leaned on his liberal arts education.

“Ultimately, my classes taught me how to acquire ­knowledge,” Bernardi says. “Having a broad education across technologies and disciplines gave me the confidence to try new things.” And seemingly it honed a talent — much like the movie Coco — to shine brightly.

Diane Toroian Keaggy, AB ’90, is senior news director of campus life.

The post On an animated journey appeared first on The Source.

Renowned ­evolutionary ­biologist Jonathan Losos has returned to ­Washington ­University to lead a new academic center — the Living Earth Collaborative — to advance the study of ­biodiversity. The Living Earth ­Collaborative will team ­investigators from Washington University, the Missouri ­Botanical Garden and the Saint Louis Zoo, as well as other local and regional organizations, to study the great diversity of plants and ­animals with which we share this world, and to help ­conserve them before they become extinct.

According to the 2016 Living Planet Report, published by the World Wide Fund for Nature, global ­populations of fish, birds, mammals, ­amphibians and reptiles declined by 58 percent ­between 1970 and 2012. And the planet could ­witness a ­two-thirds decline from 1970 to 2020.

This view was confirmed by scientists in the July 25, 2017, issue of the Proceedings of the ­National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. In the paper’s abstract, the authors state: ­“Dwindling population sizes and range shrinkages amount to a massive ­anthropogenic erosion of ­biodiversity and of the ecosystem services ­essential to civilization. This ­‘biological ­annihilation’ ­underlines the ­seriousness for ­humanity of Earth’s ongoing sixth mass extinction event.”

Against this dire backdrop, the Living Earth ­Collaborative will serve as a hub to facilitate ­interdisciplinary research among the world’s ­leading scholars in the field of biodiversity and other scholars across a wide range of fields. Their collective work promises to help garner understanding about the processes that create and maintain species’ ­diversity. Ultimately, the center’s aim is to help ­create a sustainable future on Earth for people, plants and wildlife.

On the eve of his return to the university, Losos, the ­inaugural William H. Danforth Distinguished University Professor, sat down with the editor of Washington magazine to discuss his new role and his hopes for the ­Living Earth Collaborative.

Q: You taught at Washington University for 14 years before being recruited by Harvard University in 2006. Why return to WashU now?
JL: Washington University is a great place, and I had a wonderful experience when I was a faculty member in the biology department from 1992 to 2006. Both the institution and the people are first-rate, so it was with some hesitation that I left. Now, with the creation of the Living Earth Collaborative, I have a remarkable opportunity to work closely with colleagues at the university and other important St. Louis institutions.

Q: You’re just getting started, but could you speak to the collaborative’s goals, mission?
JL: The mission of the center is to become a world leader in the research and ­conservation of ­biological diversity. Efforts will span the ­spectrum from basic to applied work: ­understanding the ­basics of how species live in their own ­environments, how they evolve, how ecosystems are structured; identifying threats to these species and ecosystems; and figuring out what we can do to help protect them.

What is particularly exciting is that St. Louis already has an extraordinary number of ­individuals and institutions concerned with biological ­diversity, both in research and conservation. Of course, these include the three partner institutions in the Living Earth Collaborative: Washington University, the Missouri Botanical Garden and the Saint Louis Zoo. But there are other important institutions with strong programs, including the University of Missouri–St. Louis and its ­Whitney R. Harris World Ecology Center; Saint Louis ­University; the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center; the Endangered Wolf Center; and governmental and ­nongovernmental organizations, such as the ­Missouri ­Department of Conservation and the ­Missouri chapter of the Nature Conservancy.

Our goal is to build connections and ­collaborations and synergies with all these ­institutions to make St. Louis a great center for biodiversity study and understanding.

Q: Could you also speak to your first plans?
JL: One model guiding my plans is that “if you get people in the same room, good things will happen.” People in different departments, schools and, especially, institutions often don’t know each other. Yet we’re fortunate because these institutions are geographically close. Initially, we’re planning to get people together, introduce them, identify their shared interests and start ­building on that.

Q: Do you see your role ultimately as a facilitator?
JL: At the start, I’ll be introducing people and organizing events — discussion groups, workshops, symposia — to build bridges. I’ll try to facilitate that directly when I see opportunities, but it’s my hope that synergy will come from the ­bottom up as people make connections themselves and learn that the Living Earth Collaborative is here to support them.

Q: Is the challenge of species loss too daunting? Is it too late to reverse some of the damage?
JL: It’s easy to get depressed about the state of the world right now. There are lots of problems that need to be fixed. But you can’t be overwhelmed by the immensity of the problem. It’s not too late. In fact, some good things have happened lately, so it’s not all gloom and doom. To cite an example near and dear to my heart, American ­alligators were threatened with extinction 40 years ago, and now they’re plentiful. The same is true for bald eagles. We have to learn from what’s working and what’s not working, and then figure out where the opportunities are to make a difference.

Our collaborative — with great scientists at all three institutions and others in the St. Louis area working together — can move us forward in two ways: One way is to work both locally and around the world to figure out what species are endangered; the second is to use that knowledge to ­determine what needs to be done to protect and conserve them.

In this context, the opportunity exists to consider more than just the scientific research and to build collaborations with social scientists, ­architects, ethicists and more — all among the many areas in which WashU excels.

Q: Are there any particular species that you’ll focus on first?
JL: We’re not that far yet. This is not the sort of center where I come in as director and say, “Here are the four things that we’re going to do.” Again, I see myself as building bridges and facilitating interaction. And based on the ­expertise we coalesce in our interactions, we’ll find the best targets for our work.

Q: What do you see as the biggest challenges, threats to biodiversity?
JL: There are lots of threats, and this is one of the problems we face. If there were just a single threat, we could focus on it and figure out what to do about it. But, unfortunately, we humans have messed up the world in a lot of different ways. We’re cutting down the habitat; we’re ­polluting the air and the water; we’re ­overexploiting ­species for food or other products; and, of course, we’re changing the climate. And then there are ­particular problems facing particular species, and some of them are quite specific.

Obviously, there is no one silver bullet and no one thing we can study to try to solve all the problems. No one institution or collaborative can take on everything at once either. We’re going to have to figure out — given the expertise that we have — the best approach for us. And, again, I can’t tell you what that is right now; a lot will depend on what we find to be our strengths and the areas where we are particularly suited to make an impact. So that’s what I’m working on now: figuring out where our efforts will be best spent.

Q: One of the biggest threats to sustainable life on Earth is climate change, but the topic, at least in our country, is so politically fraught. How do you plan to approach the topic and study its impact on loss of habitat and loss of species?
JL: Climate change is a huge problem, of course. But until recently it wasn’t emphasized when considering species at risk. The other factors we discussed — habitat loss, overexploitation and so on — were the problems researchers focused on. Now, we realize that climate change has such pervasive consequences that it no doubt will be a major factor impacting species and their loss. Therefore, we will certainly look at that, but ­probably as one of many interrelated issues.

Before continuing, I should point out that Washington University already has a group ­studying climate change and doing a lot of great work. I’m referring to the ­International Center for Energy, Environment and ­Sustainability ­(InCEES). In many respects, I’ve been looking at how­ InCEES is structured as a guide to help me structure the Living Earth ­Collaborative. And, of course, opportunities exist to interact with that group. By bringing in more expertise on biodiversity issues, I see us working with them to figure out — from both the scientific side and the social and political side — what the issues are and what some of the solutions might be.

Further, Washington University has a strong environmental studies program in Arts & Sciences; it’s an interdisciplinary, non-­departmentally based major. And they’re doing all kinds of ­wonderful things that mesh very well with the goals of the collaborative in terms of improving undergraduate training and of bringing people ­together — faculty and others involved in ­environmental studies — to think about how we could develop new programs in research, conservation and so on related to the environment. So I’m looking forward to joining forces with them as well.

Q: In your opinion, how much time do we have to turn the tide?
JL: It seems unlikely that we will destroy all life forms on Earth; something will be left. ­However, we have started a mass extinction event. The actual number of species that has gone extinct is ­probably fairly small so far, but it’s ­accelerating rapidly. Moreover, we’re getting to the point where some species are beyond hope. Many scientists think that saving the polar bear may be impossible, for example. So we’re already late to the game.

The impacts are happening, and the extinctions are occurring or can’t be reversed. The longer we wait to get serious about solving these problems, the more species we will lose.
From a geological time frame, life survives mass extinctions. There have been five already, and after a while, life has recovered. The problem is the time frame to recovery is 5 million to 10 million years. Therefore, the longer we wait to address overexploitation, habitat loss, etc., the more devastation there will be and the longer it will take for our descendants to be able to enjoy a world in which the impacts of this mass extinction event are no longer apparent.

So, I don’t think we have any time actually. We need to start doing as much as we can as quickly as we can.

Q: What would you like our readers — our Washington University community — to take away from this discussion?
JL: I think the message today is that our new collaborative joins a leading university, one of the best botanical gardens (considered among the top three botanical gardens in the world, because in addition to its fabulous grounds, it has an ­enormous research and conservation program), and one of the best zoos in the world. Very few other cities in the country, perhaps in the world, have a great zoo, a great botanical garden as well as a great university. In the biggest picture, the Living Earth Collaborative provides us the opportunity to bring together these three institutions with ­overlapping expertise and missions in new ways to work toward great outcomes, in both learning about the biological world around us and using that knowledge to figure out how to conserve it. We’re just getting started, but we have an opportunity to do truly great and amazing things.

Interview conducted by Terri Nappier, editor, Washington magazine.

For more information, see “International research powerhouses join forces to advance study of life on Earth.”

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A new job, a new wife, a newfound popular acclaim.

It was 1837, and things were going well for Felix Mendelssohn, who had just begun work on his celebrated Opus 44 quartets. The following year, the young composer’s high spirits would find perfect expression in the exuberant Quartet in D Major, completed just weeks after the birth of Mendelssohn’s son.

At 7 p.m. Sunday, April 22, the Calidore String Quartet, one of the most acclaimed and sought-after chamber ensembles of its generation, will perform the Quartet in D Major, along with works by Dmitri Shostakovich and Ludwig van Beethoven, as part of the Great Artists Series at Washington University in St. Louis.

Presented by the Department of Music in Arts & Sciences, the performance will take place in the E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall. Tickets are $40, or $32 for seniors and Washington University faculty and staff, and $15 for students and children.

Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office, 314-935-6543, or at edison.wustl.edu.

Program

The performance will open with Mendelssohn’s Quartet in D Major, followed by Shostakovich’s Quartet No. 9 in E-flat Major, Op. 117. The latter piece, completed in 1964, was Shostakovich’s second version of the Ninth Quartet. The first was completed in 1961 but, in a fit of depression, the composer burnt the manuscript in a stove. The second version, which fortunately escaped the flames, was dedicated to Shostakovich’s third wife, Irina Antonovna, whom he married in 1962.

Following intermission, the program will conclude with Beethoven’s Quartet in F Major, Op. 59, No. 1. Commissioned by a Russian nobleman, Count Andrey Razumovsky, the quartet is now considered one of Beethoven’s greatest chamber works, though its length and notorious technical demands initially sparked controversy.

“Surely you do not consider this music,” the violinist Felix Radicati is said to have complained. To which Beethoven replied: “Not for you, but for a later age.”

Calidore String Quartet

Praised by the Los Angeles Times for its “remarkable … precision of expression” and “understated but relentless intensity,” the Calidore String Quartet was formed in 2010 by violinists Jeffrey Myers and Ryan Meehan, violist Jeremy Berry and cellist Estelle Choi.

The group takes its name from an amalgamation of “California” and “doré,” French for “golden” — a combination that suggests both a reverence for its home state and a commitment to cultural diversity.

Described by Gramophone as “the epitome of confidence and finesse,” Calidore has performed throughout North America, Europe and Asia, at venues including Carnegie Hall, Wigmore Hall, Lincoln Center and Seoul’s Kumho Art Hall. The group has collaborated with artists and ensembles such as Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Joshua Bell and the Quatuor Ebéne, among many others.

In 2016, Calidore won top honors at the inaugural M-Prize International Chamber Music Competition, the largest prize for chamber music in the world. Other honors include the 2017 Lincoln Center Emerging Artist Award and grand prizes in the Fischoff, Coleman, Chesapeake and Yellow Springs competitions.

The quartet’s performances have been broadcast on the BBC, National Public Radio and national television in Canada, Korea and Germany. Recordings include quartets by Mendelssohn and Haydn and an album commemorating the World War I centennial, with music of Hindemith, Milhaud, Stravinsky, de La Presle and Toch.

About  the series

Now in its second season, the Great Artists Series presents intimate recitals with some of the brightest stars in contemporary classical music. The series’ third season lineup will be announced April 22, immediately prior to Calidore’s performance.

The E. Desmond Lee Concert Hall is located in the 560 Music Center, 560 Trinity Ave., at the intersection with Delmar Boulevard. For more information, call 314-935-5566 or email daniels@wustl.edu.

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John Heil has been selected as a 2018 recipient of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, making him the eighth Washington University in St. Louis faculty member so honored since 2010.

Heil, professor of philosophy in Arts & Sciences, was among 175 awardees of the 93-year-old fellowship announced April 5. Fellows were selected from a pool of nearly 3,000 applicants from the United States and Canada.

“It’s exceptionally satisfying to name 175 new Guggenheim Fellows,” said Edward Hirsch, president of the foundation. “These artists and writers, scholars and scientists, represent the best of the best.”

Fellows are selected based on prior achievement and exceptional promise. Fellowships include a grant intended to support artists, scholars in the humanities and social sciences, and scientific researchers.

Heil, who was traveling with his wife, Harrison, in Australia when he was notified of the fellowship, said, “I was floored, thrilled and honored.”

The grant will provide Heil time to complete a book he is working on that explores the relation between the world as it appears to us and the world as it is revealed by fundamental physics. It will draw from his previous works “From an Ontological Point of View” and “The Universe as We Find It,” taking themes from them in a new direction.

In 2013, Heil was selected as inaugural editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Philosophical Association and has been interviewed in several philosophy and literary outlets, including 3:AM Magazine and Biggest Questions. He is listed among the “50 Most Influential Living Philosophers” by TheBestSchools.org.

Heil’s Guggenheim Fellowship is the eighth awarded to Arts & Sciences faculty in the past eight years. Previous winners are:

• Christopher A. Stark, assistant professor of music composition, in 2017;
• Glenn Stone, professor of sociocultural anthropology and of environmental studies, in 2016;
• Susan Rotroff, the Jarvis Thurston & Mona Van Duyn Professor Emerita in classics, and Leigh E. Schmidt, the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor, in 2013;
• John R. Bowen, the Dunbar-Van Cleve Professor of sociocultural anthropology, in 2012;
• Pascal Boyer, the Henry Luce Professor of Collective and Individual Memory, in 2011; and
• and Matthew J. Gabel, associate chair and professor of political science, in 2010.

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“The difference between a perfectly decent person and a monster is just a few thoughts.”
– Wallace Shawn

News is for fools. Kindness is a lie. Killing, to our animal nature, is simply enjoyable.

Lemon has polite manners and ugly ideas. From the comfort of her London flat, she sips juice, ponders Nazis and watches her small inheritance waste inevitably away.

In “Aunt Dan and Lemon,” playwright Wallace Shawn explores the fragility of civilized society, and how easily cultured masks slip in the face of power.

“Unfortunately, the play feels very timely in our current political climate,” said Annamaria Pileggi, professor of practice in drama, who will direct the production April 13-22 for Washington University in St. Louis’ Performing Arts Department (PAD) in Arts & Sciences.

“It asks a very simple question,” Pileggi said. “Does compassion exist?”

Vicarious lives

First staged in 1985, “Aunt Dan and Lemon” is the eighth play by the American actor and writer Wallace Shawn, best known for roles in “My Dinner with Andre” (1981), “The Princess Bride” (1987) and the “Toy Story” films.

Much of “Aunt Dan and Lemon” unfolds in flashback. As a girl, Lemon drifts away from her dysfunctional parents, escaping the family home for a small shack in the garden. Her solitude is broken by visits from Aunt Dan (short for Danielle), a garrulous Oxford Don who entertains Lemon with wild tales and blunt opinions.

“Lemon lives vicariously through Aunt Dan’s stories,” Pileggi said. “But the stories Dan chooses to tell are completely inappropriate for an 11-year-old. She talks about sex, she talks about murder, she talks about war.

“Dan is not malevolent in this,” Pileggi said. Amidst the tumult of the Vietnam War, Dan’s ruthless, Kissinger-style realpolitik has caused a rift with Lemon’s mother. “In her loneliness, Dan seeks out a sympathetic ear. And Lemon is ripe for the picking.”

Entertained and excited, young Lemon absorbs Dan’s stories uncritically. Everyone is corrupt. Villages are inevitably bombed. Society is built on a foundation of murder. But as Lemon grows older, her thoughts curdle into shrugging, pitiless cynicism.

“If killing were totally repugnant to animals, they couldn’t survive,” Lemon tells the audience at one point. “So an enjoyment of killing is there inside us. In polite society, people don’t discuss it, but the fact is that it’s enjoyable … ”

“Lemon is a lovely, angelic-seeming figure who becomes a kind of monster,” Pileggi said. “She is filled with brutal ideas, and we see how Dan’s stories have shaped her.

“But Lemon also asks us to reflect: How complicit are we in the systems that maintain our way of life?”

Cast & Crew

The cast of seven features Emma Flannery as Lemon and Ebby Offord as Aunt Dan.  Lemon’s mother and father are played by T.J. Brantley and Victor Mendez, who also appear in other roles. Carly Rosenbaum is Mindy, who features in many of Dan’s stories. Rounding out the cast are Nathan Wetter and Marek Rodriguez as Andy and Raimondo.

Sets and costumes are by Rob Morgan and JC Krajicek. Lighting and sound are by Jeremy Pomerantz and Ben Lewis. Danny Washelesky is assistant director. Stage manager is Mark Fernandez, with assistance from Joshua Sarris. Dramaturg is Nathan Lamp with assistance from Kaia Lyons. Props designer is Emily Frei.

Tickets

“Aunt Dan and Lemon” begins at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 13 and 14; and at 2 p.m. Saturday, April 15. Performances continue the following weekend at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, April 20 and 21; and at 2 p.m. Sunday, April 22.

Performances take place in the A.E. Hotchner Studio Theatre, located in Mallinckrodt Center, 6465 Forsyth Blvd. Tickets are $20, or $15 for students, seniors and Washington University faculty and staff, and $10 for WashU students. Tickets are available through the Edison Theatre Box Office.

For more information, call 314-935-6543.

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