Ampersand Magazine, Spring 2025

Magazine | Spring 2025

Fifty years of space exploration

Global biodiversity begins at home

The research lab of the future

The McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences celebrates a milestone

Three St. Louis institutions work to protect plants and animals

Arts & Sciences faculty are transforming their fields of study

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SPRING 2025

The Ampersand magazine shares stories of incredible people, research, and ideas in Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis. It is published semiannually and distributed to alumni, faculty, students, staff, and friends of Arts & Sciences. EMAIL

ampersand@wustl.edu WEBSITE

ampersand.wustl.edu DEAN

Feng Sheng Hu PUBLISHER

Ebba Segerberg DIRECTOR OF MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS

Marcia Sullivan EDITOR

Sarah Hutchins MANAGING EDITOR

Samantha Stevenson CREATIVE DIRECTOR

Sudon Choe OUT OF THE CLASSROOM

Last summer, students in the Pathfinder Fellows in Environmental Leadership program traveled to Madagascar to research environmental challenges. The multi-year Ampersand Program allows a small cohort of students to study environmental science, policy, and sustainability through a partnership with the Missouri Botanical Garden. Elizabeth Swords (pictured bottom left), a junior studying environmental analysis and the business of social impact, worked with villagers in rural Madagascar to improve daily life, which included teaching community members how to build clay stoves.

PUBLICATION COORDINATOR

Simone Becque

DIGITAL EDITORS

Kyra Ramsey, Gennie Avellino, KJ Schaeffner LEAD PHOTOGRAPHER

Sean Garcia

CONTRIBUTING PHOTOGRAPHERS

Joe Angeles, James Byard, Whitney Curtis, Thomas Malkowicz, Danny Reise DESIGNERS & ILLUSTRATORS

Daniel Fishel, Keren Guo, William Hong, Kristen Wang CONTRIBUTING WRITERS

On the cover: Tropical forests are a research and conservation priority for the Living Earth Collaborative, a biodiversity initiative involving WashU, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Saint Louis Zoo (p. 14) (Credit: S. Ramsay/WCS).

Jenny Bird, Jeremy Goldmeier, Diane Toroian Keaggy, Talia Ogliore, Liam Otten, Sara Savat, Leah Shaffer, Erin Shetler, Chris Woolston EDITORIAL ADVISORS

William Acree, Deanna Barch, Andrew Brown, Thomas Eschen, Sophia Hayes, Peter Kastor, Erin McGlothlin

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From the Deanʼs Desk Spring is one of my favorite seasons at WashU. From presiding over graduation celebrations to catching the tulips blooming on the quad, there is always more to discover depending on where — and how — you look. It’s the “how” that’s most exciting. This issue of Ampersand magazine features some of the dynamic ways discovery is changing, particularly in an age of digital transformation. From using high-powered computing to revolutionize the development of green energy to investigating the impact of social media algorithms, scholars in Arts & Sciences have embarked on a revolutionary journey to use digital tools for groundbreaking discoveries (p. 30). Also building momentum this spring is the Living Earth Collaborative, a thriving biodiversity initiative involving WashU, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Saint Louis Zoo (p. 14). This unique collaborative leverages these prestigious institutions to address critical issues of biodiversity, climate change, and sustainability — work with a profound impact on human welfare, environmental justice, and public health. That same spirit of transdisciplinary collaboration is on display as we celebrate 50 years of the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences, a consortium that cemented the university and St. Louis as a hub for space exploration and research. To celebrate this milestone, we’re taking a look back at the missions and discoveries that put the center at the heart of space research (p. 22). This issue also highlights the many accomplishments of our Arts & Sciences alumni and faculty. You will have a chance to meet our Distinguished Alumni Award recipients, each of whom has made transformational impacts on our world thanks to the strong foundation provided by their Arts & Sciences education (p. 40). You’ll also find WashU faculty working on vaccines to prevent dementia (p. 8), helping undergraduates navigate political polarization (p. 11), and earning well-deserved recognition from the leading academic societies (p. 9, 10). I’m proud to showcase these stories and more as we continue to transform Arts & Sciences into a global model for research, teaching, and scholarship. Thank you for your continued support, and I hope to see you around campus as we celebrate another year of making positive change together.

Feng Sheng Hu Richard G. Engelsmann Dean of Arts & Sciences Lucille P. Markey Distinguished Professor Washington University in St. Louis

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Table of Contents

FEATURES 14

Global biodiversity begins at home Combining the forces of WashU, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Saint Louis Zoo, the Living Earth Collaborative works to protect the plants and animals of the world — for their sake and ours. Since its creation, the collaborative has funded 32 research and conservation projects in 19 different countries.

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The research lab of the future Digital tools have significantly reshaped the academic landscape. To take advantage of these once-in-a-generation developments, Arts & Sciences launched a digital transformation initiative to recruit some of the brightest minds in nearly every field. Step inside the research lab of the future to see how faculty members are transforming their fields of study.

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AROUND THE QUAD

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ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

CONVERSATION

Reclaiming St. Louis’s cultural legacy Center for the Humanities

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Seniors named Rhodes Scholarship finalists The College

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Vaccines to prevent dementia Department of Chemistry

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Are female politicians better advocates for their districts?

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Improving birth outcomes for all Dr. Heather Skanes, AB ’10, calls upon her bachelor’s degree in African and African American studies as the founder of Alabama’s first birthing center.

STUDY SESSION

Reaching your readers English graduate student Matthew Moore connects with new — yet familiar — readers by penning a personal essay that reflects on his upbringing in rural Missouri.

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Department of Political Science

SNAPSHOT 28

Searching for clues in caves

MEMORIES & MILESTONES 36

A memorable career: Henry “Roddy” Roediger III

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Fifty years of science and space exploration Take a look back at the missions and discoveries that put the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences at the heart of space exploration and research.

Ambition’s overture Elijah Darden, a psychological and brain sciences major, blends his passions for music and science as he works toward a career in medicine.

NOTES OF GRATITUDE 40

Celebrating Distinguished Alumni Award recipients

FACULTY BOOKSHELF Associate Professor Nicola Aravecchia’s latest book shares the archaeological discoveries of his decades-long research in Egypt’s Dakhla Oasis.

PERSPECTIVE 42

Rediscovering the humanities through data science 38

ampersand.wustl.edu

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Around the Quad News, milestones, and spotlights from across Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis

(Illustration: Keren Guo)

CENTER FOR THE HUMANITIES

Reclaiming St. Louis’s cultural legacy Over the last decade, The Divided City, an urban humanities initiative, has sponsored dozens of classes, seminars, and research projects grappling with difficult histories and their contemporary effects. Building on that work, WashU is launching The Engaged City. Funded by a $500,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation as well as support from WashU’s Here and Next, the initiative aims to highlight St. Louis’s cultural assets and reframe how the city sees, understands, and talks about itself. Over the next three years, The Engaged City will develop a cultural asset map, a community fellowship program, a community advisory board, and seed grant opportunities.

Find expanded versions of all Around the Quad stories.

artsci.wustl.edu/ATQ

With The Engaged City, we’re thinking about how to create tools that will be useful to people beyond the academy. Laura Perry Assistant Director for Research and Public Engagement, The Center for the Humanities

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DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL & BRAIN SCIENCES

Positive psychology

Graduate student Payton Rule won a prestigious early-career grant from the American Psychological Foundation to explore the psychological well-being of people with disabilities. The grant will support Rule’s one-year project, which involves recruiting people with disabilities to share their daily experiences through surveys. “Disabled people have been underrepresented in psychological research,” said Rule, who lives with Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease, a rare genetic condition that causes muscle atrophy and weakness in her hands, legs, and feet. Rule hopes to identify ways society can help protect those with disabilities from the psychological distress caused by unfair treatment.

DEPARTMENT OF BIOLOGY

Weedy warriors Across rice fields in Missouri, Arkansas, and Louisiana, an aggressive crop weed is becoming increasingly resistant to herbicides, according to new research from Kenneth Olsen, the George William and Irene Koechig Freiberg Professor of Biology, and postdoctoral fellow Marshall Wedger. Weedy rice infestations have had a significant economic impact, causing an estimated $45 million in economic losses in the U.S. each year and hundreds of millions of dollars in additional losses worldwide. Herbicide resistance is similar to antibiotics in medicine, Wedger said. “When resistance becomes widespread, we move on to another antibiotic.”

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AROUND THE QUAD

DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

Vaccines to prevent dementia Associate Professor Meredith Jackrel was part of a team that received a $2.9 million grant from the National Institute on Aging, part of the National Institutes of Health, to develop vaccines to prevent dementia. The newest generation of Alzheimer’s therapeutics targets accumulations of the protein amyloid beta, but the results have been underwhelming and the process of developing the treatment is expensive. Jackrel and other university researchers aim to design vaccines that will train a person’s immune system to eliminate these proteins.

(Left to right: Elijah Darden, Isaac Seiler)

THE COLLEGE

Seniors named Rhodes Scholarship finalists Elijah Darden and Isaac Seiler were finalists for one of the world’s highest academic honors, the Rhodes Scholarship. Darden, a psychological and brain sciences major who also won the Gates Cambridge Scholarship, is working to reduce health disparities. (Read more about Darden’s post-graduate plans on p. 26.) Seiler, a sociology major, also won the Truman Scholarship and is an advocate for public service and local journalism. “Elijah and Isaac are both impressive leaders, scholars, and changemakers,” said Chancellor Andrew D. Martin. “I am confident each will make a big impact addressing the critical problems that they have identified.”

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DEPARTMENT OF PSYCHOLOGICAL & BRAIN SCIENCES

Remarkable researcher

Deanna Barch was honored by two national health organizations, the National Academy of Medicine and the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation. The awards commend Barch, the Gregory B. Couch Professor of Psychiatry and a professor of psychological and brain sciences, for her contributions to advancing the medical community’s study and treatment of mental health disorders. Barch is currently focused on the connections between cognition, emotion, and brain function to better understand behavior and cognition found in illnesses such as schizophrenia and depression.

DEPARTMENT OF EARTH, ENVIRONMENTAL, AND PLANETARY SCIENCES

Big drone takes flight Last November, the Meramec River became a classroom when students in the “Geospatial Field Methods” course traveled to Tyson Research Center to document the river’s 10th-largest flood since 1904. “One goal was for students to experience deploying these techniques in the real world in response to an emergent problem,” said Alex Bradley, an associate professor of Earth, environmental, and planetary sciences. The group launched a drone fitted with a multispectral camera to collect data that could be valuable in understanding the extent and damage of flooding. Future redeployments of the drone might help researchers observe how the landscape recovers from flooding.

ARTS & SCIENCES STRATEGIC PLAN

Protecting medical implants Timothy Wencewicz, an associate professor of chemistry, is part of a team that won a nearly $430,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to study methods for detecting bacterial infections that form around medical implants. The team, which is supported by Arts & Sciences’ Incubator for Transdisciplinary Futures, will focus on biofilms that form on devices such as catheters and joint replacements once they are implanted in the human body. They hope to develop new molecules that will detect and bind to bacteria, differentiating them from nonharmful cells. “The beauty of our approach is in its simplicity,” Wencewicz said.

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AROUND THE QUAD

DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

The honor of a lifetime Ismael Mourifié, a professor of economics, was elected to The Econometric Society, an international society for the advancement of economic theory in its relation to statistics and mathematics. Mourifié uses economics to explore phenomena in education and labor, such as the underrepresentation of women in STEM, judicial leniency, and wage inequality. Mourifié’s election to the society is a rare achievement, especially for an earlycareer scholar. Fewer than 5% of economists receive the honor in their lifetime.

DEPARTMENT OF EAST ASIAN LANGUAGES AND CULTURES

Meet me in St. Louis

Zhao Ma has long been fascinated by one mystery of the 1904 World’s Fair in St. Louis: Who took care of the visiting Chinese dignitaries’ precious wardrobes and kept their households running while they socialized with prominent members of St. Louis’s high society? As part of his ongoing study of the United States’ relations with China during the early-20th century, the associate professor of modern Chinese history and culture recently explored the fair’s often-overlooked Chinese tradesmen, assistants, and interpreters — individuals who played a crucial role in supporting the Chinese mission at the exposition. The 1904 World’s Fair took place during an era when Chinese laborers were prohibited from entering the U.S., leading to hardships and harassment.

ARTS & SCIENCES STRATEGIC PLAN

Could mindfulness protect against Alzheimer’s? Funding from the National Institutes of Health will allow the Mindfulness Science and Practice research cluster sponsored by the Incubator for Transdisciplinary Futures to explore if mindfulness could offer protection against Alzheimer’s disease in Latinx older adults, a vulnerable and understudied population. Teaching this group new techniques to better handle stress could protect them from the physiological problems that stress produces, including dementia. “We don’t know whether mindfulness can do that, but we want to test that possibility,” said Todd Braver, a professor in psychological and brain sciences.

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DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY

Cancer’s appetite for fructose Fructose consumption has increased considerably over the past five decades, largely due to the widespread use of high-fructose corn syrup in beverages and ultra-processed foods. Research from the lab of Gary Patti, the Michael and Tana Powell Professor of Chemistry, found that dietary fructose promotes tumor growth in animal models of melanoma, breast cancer, and cervical cancer. Although fructose doesn’t directly fuel tumors, Patti found that the liver converts the sugar into usable nutrients for cancer cells — a compelling discovery that could open new avenues for cancer care and treatment. “The idea that you can tackle cancer with diet is intriguing,” Patti said.

DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

Can we get better at disagreeing? WashU’s Civil Society Initiative explores reasoning and citizenship through classes, guest speakers, a summer program for high school students, and a range of public events. The initiative launched a new course last fall, “Disagreement, Extremism and Polarization,” that allowed students to study those themes and discuss how they relate to social and political challenges. “The more you know about the causes of polarization, the more you know about what’s going on psychologically, the more you can adjust your own ways of engaging — and perhaps approach disagreement with a bit more equanimity,” said Allan Hazlett, a professor of philosophy and member of the initiative’s executive committee.

DEPARTMENT OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

Constituent conversations Federal lawmakers are often motivated to focus on national politics, but Assistant Professor Jaclyn Kaslovsky found that women in the U.S. House of Representatives were more likely to discuss their own districts when speaking on the congressional floor. Kaslovsky and her collaborator collected transcripts from House hearings between 1999 and 2018 — the Clinton administration into the first Trump administration — and created a dictionary of words and phrases that suggest local advocacy. Overall, female representatives were more likely than their male counterparts to use these keywords during hearings. “Women are bringing their constituents into the conversation,” Kaslovsky said.

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ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT

Improving birth outcomes for all A degree in African and African American studies laid the groundwork for Dr. Heather Skanes, AB ’10, to launch Alabama’s first birthing center. by

JENNY BIRD

When Dr. Heather Skanes, AB ’10, meets with pregnant patients at the prenatal care and childbirth facility she established in 2022, she often draws upon her bachelor’s degree in African and African American studies. “A linguistics course taught me that African American vernacular has its own rules and consistency,” she said. “When people come to the center, we speak to them in a way that makes them feel comfortable.”

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After completing her education, Skanes returned home to Alabama in 2019 to address the challenges of Black maternal health and the high mortality rates affecting Black mothers. Black women in Alabama are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related causes than white women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the state’s overall maternal mortality rate is nearly twice the national rate. While working as an OB-GYN, Skanes interacted with midwives and saw their potential to tackle the complexities of Black maternal health. Midwives can provide specialized care before, during, and after childbirth. They are often more supportive of natural approaches to pregnancy and birth, Skanes said, working with patients to create personalized plans that respect their choices and goals. The profession was once a vital part of Alabama’s healthcare ecosystem. “If you go back to the early 1900s, there were hundreds of midwives in Alabama and the majority of them were Black,” Skanes said, adding that Black women were not allowed to give birth in most hospitals at the time. By the 1970s, midwifery began to fall out of favor, and the practice was officially banned from the state in 1976.

African-American Studies” and helped bring her to campus last year for a talk on the challenges Black women face as patients of OB-GYNs. Toliver-Diallo isn’t surprised to find that Skanes’s career has made an impact — and that her work connects back to her studies at WashU. “She has always been drawn to the humanities side of arts and sciences,” Toliver-Diallo said. “You can’t heal someone’s body without considering the holistic process and understanding the sociological determinants that affect patients.” Three years after opening, Oasis Family Birthing Center has consulted with more than 100 families and helped deliver more than 30 babies. Skanes hopes her work will continue to highlight the positive health outcomes associated with midwives. “We are educating Black midwives as a way to create equitable access and decrease overall mortality rates and disparities,” she said. “We hope to show people that this is a good thing for Alabama.”

Around the time Skanes was finishing her medical residency at Morehouse College, advocates were pushing to reestablish midwifery, and in 2017 Alabama re-legalized the profession. Further grassroots efforts led to the legalization of nonhospital birth centers in 2022. While hospitals are vital for high-risk pregnancies and complicated births, Skanes said many pregnancies are low risk and perfect for a birth center setting. “Alabama is a healthcare desert, and the large hospitals here have to treat everyone the same way,” she said. “For low-risk births, midwifery care in a birth center means you get more education, more time, and more comfort with your provider, which can go a long way in improving disparate health outcomes.” Skanes’s clinic, Oasis Family Birthing Center, is located in an underserved area of Birmingham, Alabama, and is the state’s first certified birthing center. Patient care is at the heart of the clinic, and Skanes’s liberal arts education helped inform her decisions about how to make the space as welcoming as possible for a range of patients. “On the walls, there’s art and imagery of Blackness,” she said. “The center has the comforts of a home. I want people to know we will treat them as we would treat our own families.” Wilmetta Toliver-Diallo, senior assistant dean of advising in the College of Arts & Sciences and a lecturer in African and African American studies, worked with Skanes when she was a WashU undergraduate involved in Black Anthology, a studentrun theater production. Toliver-Diallo often invites Skanes to speak to first-year students in “Foundations in African &

Dr. Heather Skanes’s clinic, Oasis Family Birthing Center, has helped deliver more than 30 babies since it opened in 2022. The team has consulted with over 100 families. (Photos courtesy of Heather Skanes)

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FEATURES

Global biodiversity begins at home Combining the forces of WashU, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Saint Louis Zoo, the Living Earth Collaborative works to protect the plants and animals of the world — for their sake and ours.

by

CHRIS WOOLSTON

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The Living Earth Collaborative’s research into primate social life led to new protections for apes and their companions. (Credit: Will Burrard-Lucas)

W

ild chimpanzees will happily share their secrets, but first you must gain their trust. After many months observing chimps from a safe distance in the Goualougo Triangle of the Congo Basin, anthropologist Crickette Sanz made it to the inner circle. Sanz, the James W. and Jean L. Davis Professor in Arts & Sciences, saw mothers teach their young to wield carefully crafted sticks to smash beehives or catch termites — the most elaborate tool use ever witnessed in non-humans. She also documented unmistakable friendships between chimps and western lowland gorillas, bonds that went against expected primate behavior. “Those two species are supposed to be competitors,” Sanz said. “But when a gorilla walks up to a party of chimps and sees a friend, the two will run up to each other and start playing.” As co-director of the Living Earth Collaborative (LEC), Sanz knows all about the value of powerful partnerships. The initiative combines the resources of WashU, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Saint Louis Zoo to understand, protect, and promote biodiversity in St. Louis and around the

world. Through extensive conversation and collaboration, the LEC’s researchers are addressing pressing environmental problems that would be too big for one institution to tackle on its own. “We have something that’s close to unique,” said LEC codirector Jonathan Losos, the William H. Danforth Distinguished University Professor. “We’ve got a great university, one of the world’s leading centers of botanical scholarship, and a fantastic zoo with a fabulous conservation program all within a few miles of each other. This gives us a chance to do scientifically and societally important things that other institutions can’t match.” Sanz couldn’t do her research in the Congo on her own. Funding from the zoo enabled her to hire Congolese field assistants and pay for expensive motion-sensing cameras that can monitor the chimps 24/7. She also relied on primate experts at the zoo to review the many hours of footage to ensure that rare and elusive species caught on camera were correctly identified. Now, thanks to new hires and its inclusion in the Arts & Sciences Strategic Plan, the LEC is poised to expand its impact

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FEATURES

Cradles of animal and plant biodiversity, tropical forests are a research and conservation priority for the LEC. (Credit: S. Ramsay/WCS)

and its reach. Future efforts will focus on three key aspects of biodiversity: tropical forest conservation, urban plants and wildlife, and the nexus of nature conservation and human wellbeing, a crucial but often overlooked factor in conservation work. “The health of people and the health of the environment are inextricably linked,” Losos said.

LEC as the president and director of the garden and the George Engelmann Professor of Botany at WashU. Toby Pennington, a leading expert in tropical ecology, will leave his position at the University of Exeter in the U.K. to become the first David and Dorothy Kemper Professor, a joint appointment between WashU and the garden.

A garden for the world

Pennington’s work is focused on plants in dry tropical forests, some of the most productive, diverse, and fragile habitats in the world. More than half of the tropical regions of Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa, and Southern Asia lack the moisture to support true rainforests, but they still brim with a profusion of plants, including many that have yet to be properly identified and inventoried.

The Missouri Botanical Garden — a sprawling, growing enterprise with tendrils in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe — adds a crucial element to the LEC’s mission, said Gunter Fischer, the garden’s senior vice president of science and conservation. “The Missouri Botanical Garden’s programs operate locally and throughout the world to address key challenges facing humanity by empowering stakeholders to manage, protect, and restore biodiversity sustainably,” he said. The LEC is quickly building momentum with the addition of two new faculty members who will strengthen WashU’s ties with the Missouri Botanical Garden and expand the cohort’s international network. In January, renowned botanist Lúcia Lohmann, previously a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of São Paulo in Brazil, joined the

“The Missouri Botanical Garden has one of the world’s largest collections of plants from tropical Latin America,” Pennington said. “You don’t necessarily need to go to a remote area of Brazil or Peru to find them. It’s going to be much easier for me to do my work with that collection on my doorstep.” Pennington plans to lead future expeditions to Latin America for on-the-ground surveys. He helped build an international network of more than 80 researchers who are studying 2,000

The ampersand | Spring 2025 17

tropical dry forest sites across the region. Those stretches of forest still hold many secrets that could be uncovered through research trips, potentially involving teams of students and faculty from WashU, the garden, and the zoo. “There’s a huge opportunity for the LEC to document the full diversity of plants and animals on this network of study sites,” he said. “I would love to help bring it together.”

habits, and life spans remain mysterious. “For people who appreciate nature, this knowledge is important,” Losos said. “If we want to understand an animal and save it, we need to know how it works.”

A world-renowned biologist, Losos has made his own landmark contributions to evolution, ecology, and conservation through his studies of anole lizards, colorful reptiles that range through much of the Americas, including Florida, the Caribbean, and Central and South America. “There are more than 400 species of anoles, and they all have their own adaptations to their habitats,” he said. “If you want to understand how diversity evolves, they’re a great organism to study.”

The conservation of wildlife species is a key goal of the Saint Louis Zoo, a beloved St. Louis institution with global reach. The impact of a partnership like the LEC is especially apparent in Madagascar, an island of baobab trees, lemurs, tortoises, and other remarkable plants and animals. Researchers from the zoo, the garden, and WashU work together to study and protect the unique habitats of the island nation, including removing invasive plants such as strawberry guava and wild ginger from native forests. “Madagascar really stands out as an example of what the zoo and the LEC can accomplish,” said Lisa Kelley, a WashU alum who is now executive director of the Saint Louis Zoo WildCare Institute and director of the zoo’s Center for Conservation in Madagascar.

Despite decades of research by Losos and others, much work remains. Out of those 400 or so species of anole lizards, researchers have a comprehensive understanding of the biology of roughly 10, Losos said. For animals that are rare or elusive, even basic characteristics such as diets, breeding

As part of its mission to promote urban biodiversity, the LEC also fosters animal research close to home. Elizabeth Carlen, a LEC postdoctoral fellow with WashU, published a 2025 study of coyotes, animals that have moved into St. Louis, Los Angeles, and other urban areas. The team identified specific genetic

Lizards, lemurs, and coyotes

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FEATURES

Left: Close to home, former Living Earth Collaborative postdoctoral fellow Stella Uiterwaal uses radio telemetry to track the movements of local animals. (Credit: Forest Park Living Lab) Center: The LEC supports wildlife great and small in their natural habitats, including lemurs in Madagascar. (Credit: Fidy Rasambainarivo, East Carolina University) Right: Jonathan Losos, left, and Crickette Sanz are co-directors of the LEC. (Credit: Sean Garcia)

changes that may have helped coyotes adapt to life in the city, insights that could help scientists understand why some species thrive in urban environments while others struggle. The Forest Park Living Lab, another project supported by the LEC, is using motion-triggered wildlife cameras and GPS collars to study coyotes as well as a host of other species in and around Forest Park. The zoo’s research, whether local or abroad, helps spotlight the importance of conservation. “People see us as a part of their community,” Kelley said. “When they learn about our work with our partners to protect biodiversity, they’re very supportive.”

Keeping people in the picture Public support — along with the continued commitment of the three institutions — should help the LEC achieve its ambitious goals for 2025 and beyond, Losos said. He is especially excited to explore the connections between conservation and human health, a crucial topic given recent outbreaks of diseases that can spread from animals to humans. Research into the human side of nature conservation could involve multiple WashU

departments, including the new School of Public Health. “We could really plant a flag in this critically important area of research,” Losos said. In recent years, LEC researchers have studied ticks and mosquitoes in the St. Louis area, work with important implications for human well-being. Katie Westby, a staff scientist at Tyson Research Center, led a 2024 study that found some populations of mosquitoes near St. Louis and elsewhere are surprisingly resilient to heat, potentially bad news for disease transmission in a warming world. Tyson staff scientist Solny Adalsteinsson co-authored a 2023 study that found one out of 150 lone star ticks in the St. Louis area carry the Bourbon virus, an infectious agent that can cause fevers, body aches, and rashes. The researchers concluded that the tick-borne virus has likely already infected many people in the area, with more cases to come. Human well-being is already a key part of Sanz’s work in the Congo, where she engages with local communities to help people coexist with their primate neighbors. She discourages direct human interactions with chimpanzees and gorillas for

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By the numbers Partners:

3 WashU, the Missouri Botanical Garden, and the Saint Louis Zoo

People:

70 WashU faculty members serving as biodiversity fellows

53 Biodiversity fellows at the Missouri Botanical Garden

28 Biodiversity fellows at the Saint Louis Zoo the sake of all involved. The Ebola virus, for example, emerged in wildlife and then spread to humans, Sanz said, causing deadly outbreaks in several African countries. “Ebola was a reminder that animals need their own space.” Sanz’s research with the LEC is making a difference. Inspired by her findings on the sophisticated cultures and intriguing behaviors of the resident great apes, the Republic of Congo expanded the boundaries of its Nouabalé-Ndoki National Park to include the Goualougo and Djéké Triangle study areas. In 2024, the United Nations Convention on Migratory Species adopted a concerted action to further protect the “behavioral diversity and cultures” of chimpanzees across equatorial Africa. “We’ve already seen some incredible results, and there’s more to come,” Sanz said. “In the next few years, we’re going to see the LEC take more of a leading role in global conservation.”

35 Biodiversity fellows at other St. Louis-area institutions

Projects:

32 Research and conservation projects funded by LEC seed grants in 19 different countries

103 Publications resulting from LEC-supported work

18 Follow-up grants inspired by seed funding, with a total value of $2.1 million

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CONVERSATION

Reaching your readers English graduate student Matthew Moore connects with new — yet familiar — readers through a personal take on public scholarship.

by

JENNY BIRD

Matthew Moore, a doctoral candidate in the Department of English, has a dilemma: The people he writes about are unlikely to read his work. Moore is a first-generation college student from Blythedale, Missouri, a blue-collar town with fewer than 200 residents. “A college education was unattainable for most there and scorned by the rest,” said Moore, who earned an MFA from Iowa State University. Growing up in rural Missouri sparked his academic interest in whiteness, masculinity, and working-class culture in the heartland. The more he explored these themes in his writing, however, the more distant he felt from the communities they represented. A new WashU program for graduate students, A&S CREATES, is helping bridge that divide. The program’s first cohort is focused on public scholarship, encouraging students like Moore to share their work beyond traditional academic audiences. Developed by William Acree, vice dean of interdisciplinary initiatives and innovation, A&S CREATES has changed Moore’s approach to public-facing writing and helped him pen his first essay for Belt Magazine.

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Why did you want to join the A&S CREATES program and the cohort on public scholarship? I wanted to be at the forefront of this new initiative because I’ve always valued interdisciplinary scholarship and collaboration. I liked that the program would put me outside my comfort zone and allow me to work with graduate students from other departments. I’ve also come to think about how my work — somewhat insular academic writing — can have a wider impact and engage directly with the communities I’m writing about. I view art as a social practice, an active engagement with the world that serves as a form of advocacy. This program is a continuation of that and a segue into how I’m approaching my public-facing work.

The Belt essay is quite personal and discusses your relationship with your dad. What feedback have you received from friends and family? Many of the people who influenced me early in life likely wouldn’t read my work, as it’s still very much a product of academia. But the Belt essay circulated on Facebook, so my dad and a lot of my extended family saw it and liked it. Friends back home read the story and many of them messaged me expressing how much it resonated with them. Even people I didn’t grow up with, but who grew up in a similar place, reached out to say how much they related to the piece. Seeing the story have a wide impact was really significant to me because these are not only the people I’m writing about, but also the people I’m trying to write for.

I view art as a social practice, an active engagement with the world that serves as a form of advocacy. What has the program been like so far? The cohort — which includes graduate students in anthropology, Earth sciences, archaeology, and French — meets once a week for a seminar-style course taught by Christopher Schaberg, WashU’s director of public scholarship. He’s shared how to write polished magazine pitches, create easily accessible websites, and craft book proposals for different audiences. We also have conversations about why it’s important to do this work and how Arts & Sciences students can have a broader impact on society.

You recently had a piece published in Belt Magazine, a non-academic journal. How did this program help you pitch and write that essay? Every student wrote a pitch for The Conversation, a nonprofit news site that publishes stories with expert analysis by university-based scholars. My pitch was rejected, but it still provided a valuable lesson, and I received great feedback on how to pitch the next time. Chris helped me transform an original, small idea — my dad’s frustration with me running out of gas in rural Missouri — into my next pitch, a look at the politics of mobility in rural America and its reliance on a fossilfuel-driven economy. It was accepted and published in Belt Magazine, a publication that focuses on the Rust Belt and the greater Midwest. The experience made me realize there’s no wasted work.

Do you have plans to continue with this public-facing work? I plan to write more pitches and, hopefully, another essay by the end of the semester. I’m now confident that I can take small ideas, theories, or even brief moments from a paper or poem and craft a piece within the context of contemporary culture or politics for a widely read platform like Slate. That’s the mindset Chris instilled in our cohort. A&S CREATES has been invigorating for those of us who find our academic pursuits to be narrow or even antiquated. Public-facing scholarship makes you realize that’s not the case.

Matthew Moore (center), his younger sister (left), and father (right) in front of his family’s old Dodge truck. Moore grew up in rural Missouri, an experience he explored in an essay for Belt Magazine. (Photo courtesy of Matthew Moore)

22

STUDY SESSION

The McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences celebrates 50 years of science and exploration A half-century ago, aviation pioneer and former WashU board chair James S. McDonnell announced a $4 million gift (worth nearly $26 million today) to create the McDonnell Center for the Space Sciences (MCSS). Since then, his mission to establish the university and St. Louis as a hub for space exploration and research has been fulfilled many times over. The center now supports the work of over 100 researchers, including more than 40 WashU faculty members. Whether they’re using telescopes to peer across the galaxy or spectrometers to get an up-close view of materials from other worlds, the center’s researchers have significantly expanded our understanding of the universe and our place in it. To celebrate this milestone, we’re highlighting some of the missions and discoveries that put MCSS at the center of space research.

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1969

Robert M. Walker, the center’s inaugural director, and his research team receive one of the first batches of lunar samples from the Apollo 11 mission. Using techniques invented by Walker, the team studied the samples for signs of exposure to cosmic rays and other types of radiation. The work provided new insights into the history of the solar system. (Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS)

1976

Viking 1 lands on Mars, a breakthrough for solar system exploration and a pivotal moment in the early years of MCSS. Raymond E. Arvidson, then an assistant professor and now the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor Emeritus, was on (and eventually led) the imaging team that captured the first close-up views of the surface of the red planet. The mission transformed our knowledge of Mars and set the stage for future missions, including the Mars Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity in 2004, for which Arvidson was deputy principal investigator. (Credit: NASA/JPL)

1982

Robert M. Walker and members of his laboratory revolutionize the study of space materials with the help of an ion microprobe, an instrument that measures isotopes in microscopic samples from meteorites and the Moon. Walker and his team would go on to identify and characterize stardust in meteorites, opening a window into the evolution of stars that predate the Sun and the origin of materials of our solar system. (Credit: MCSS)

24

STUDY SESSION

1989

2000

NASA establishes its Planetary Data System and places WashU — under the direction of Professor Ray Arvidson — in charge of the Geosciences Node, making the university a repository of data from Mars, the Moon, and other solid bodies. Now directed by Associate Professor Paul Byrne, the Geosciences Node remains an invaluable resource for planetary researchers worldwide. (Credit: James Byard/ WashU)

The first NanoSIMS is installed at WashU. This first-of-its-kind instrument made it possible to study the origin and evolution of the solar system through analyses of extraterrestrial materials, including rocks and dust from asteroids and comets, circumstellar and interstellar dust particles, and samples of the solar wind. (Credit: MCSS)

2007 2012

SuperTIGER, a balloon-borne instrument designed to detect elements heavier than iron in high-energy cosmic rays, launches from Antarctica under the leadership of Research Professor W. Robert Binns. Brian Rauch, research associate professor of physics, leads the SuperTIGER-II missions in 2019 and 2020, furthering our knowledge of the origins of cosmic rays from beyond our solar system. (Credit: SuperTIGER team)

Thanks in large part to the vision and planning of Professor James H. Buckley, along with the work of a team of scientists and engineers at WashU, construction is completed on VERITAS, a high-energy gamma-ray observatory in Arizona. The observatory continues to advance our understanding of the universe, including the forces around black holes and the existence of dark matter. (Credit: John Quinn, University College Dublin)

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2015

2024

NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, launched in 2006, completes a fly-by of Pluto and its system of satellites, marking the first closeup exploration of the dwarf planet. William McKinnon, the Clark Way Harrison Distinguished Professor in Arts & Sciences, was a coinvestigator and one of the original scientists to conceive the mission. (Credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory/ Southwest Research Institute)

XL-Calibur, a telescope carried by a stadiumsize scientific balloon, launches from the Esrange Space Center in Sweden. XL-Calibur soared to an altitude of 130,000 ft and traversed the Atlantic ocean to northern Canada, where the mission ended. The data will be used to search for energy streaming from a black hole. Henric Krawczynski, the Wilfred R. and Ann Lee Konneker Distinguished Professor in Physics and principal investigator of the mission, will use the data to track the swirl of matter as it gets pulled into the massive object, revealing fundamental properties of the black hole, including its spin. (Credit: Nicole Rodriguez Cavero)

2024

NASA’s Europa Clipper launches to explore an icy ocean moon of Jupiter that could be the most promising spot in the solar system for life beyond Earth. William McKinnon, a member of the mission’s science team, played a pivotal role in planning the scientific observations that will be made of the moon and its ocean, insights critical for exploring the likelihood of life beneath the ice. (Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

26

STUDENT SPOTLIGHT

Ambition’s overture Elijah Darden blends his passions for music and science as he works toward a career in medicine.

by

JENNY BIRD

Listen to his musical composition “Grumble” and you’ll get an idea of what senior Elijah Darden is all about. The piece, performed by the WashU jazz ensemble in 2023, starts with notes from a single baritone sax, quickly followed by a second saxophone and bass guitar. As the piece expands, the sound rises, and other instruments fill in. Then, a new motif is introduced, and soloists — first a saxophone, then a trombone played by Darden himself — each have moments to shine. Different rhythms and phrases evoke new moods and emotions, forming a cohesive whole. The song, one of many Darden composed during his time at WashU, reflects his approach to his undergraduate years — devoting passion and depth to diverse interests, all converging toward a larger purpose. Darden’s multifaceted interests in the arts and sciences began at an early age, when he joined the “STEAM team” at his Naperville, Illinois, middle school. This program, which expanded the traditional science, technology, engineering, and math focus to include art, was a perfect fit for his interests. He was already playing the piano and, by the fifth grade, had taken up the trombone, later mastering several other brass instruments. Even at a young age, he recognized music would remain a constant companion on his journey toward a greater calling in healthcare.

Elijah Darden is a skilled trombonist and composer. He’s also heavily involved with WashU’s Emergency Support Team, which hosts clinics for the campus community. (Bottom photo courtesy of Elijah Darden)

“I knew I wanted to be in healthcare and work on improving health equity, but I didn’t know if I wanted to do that through policy and administration or directly through patient care,” Darden said. So, the summer after his high school graduation, he began training to become a certified emergency medical technician. “Being an EMT solidified that I want to work with individuals and help them have the highest level of comfort, care, and agency.”

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When Darden arrived at WashU in 2021, he quickly put his certification to work, joining the Emergency Support Team (EST), a student-run volunteer group that helps respond to campus emergencies. The group’s members are all EMT and CPR certified and must provide the same level of care as other EMS agencies. Darden rose through the EST’s ranks, becoming president his senior year. During his time with the organization, he focused on making training programs more accessible and affordable. He secured Student Union funding to subsidize CPR training fees for students and introduced classes to teach bystanders how to staunch bleeding. While Darden’s extracurricular achievements are remarkable, he considers his major in psychological and brain sciences and minor in music the core of his WashU experience. A music composition workshop he took his first year proved foundational, as did a sophomore psychology course, “Prejudice, Stereotyping, and Discrimination.” The latter profoundly shaped his perspective on healthcare, influencing his understanding of the field’s systemic challenges and his approach as a first responder. Though the two fields might initially seem unrelated, Darden sees a deep connection between his studies in music and science. “I like the idea of the foundations of different fields building upon one another,” he explained. In his courses, he explored how music can unite or divide people — concepts rooted in human psychology and the social dynamics of music. “I think about it more broadly when I think about medicine,” he said. “You need an interdisciplinary perspective to examine how different fields reach the same conclusions from distinct viewpoints.” Darden’s efforts have earned recognition from the National Collegiate Emergency Medical Services Foundation, which named WashU a HEARTSafe Campus, and the Missouri Public Health Association, which commended the EST for its public health contributions in Missouri. He was also honored by the Student Union with a leadership award and by the music department with a Clare M. Westmont Award recognizing student contributions in the classroom and concert hall. In 2024, he was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship, one of the most prestigious academic honors in the world. A few months later, he was honored with the equally impressive Gates Cambridge Scholarship, which fully funds postgraduate study and research at the University of Cambridge. When it comes to fellowships, “some doors will close, and others will open,” Darden said. “The most important thing is discovering more about yourself — your passions, your academic and professional goals, your purpose, and the impact you want to make.”

(Illustration: Keren Guo)

Elijah Darden Hometown: Naperville, Illinois Year: Senior Major: Psychological and brain sciences with a minor in music Future plans: Darden plans to earn a master’s degree in population health sciences at Cambridge before returning to the U.S. to attend medical school. Advice to other WashU students: Being in an environment like WashU, surrounded by highly capable and driven individuals achieving incredible things, it’s easy to feel lost in the midst of all that excellence. My biggest piece of advice would be to take chances and put yourself out there.

28

SNAPSHOT

Searching for clues

Sicily is thought to be the earliest Mediterranean island to be permanently occupied by humans, but the exact timing, the scope of the inhabited land, and the extent to which the island ecosystems were impacted remains a mystery. As part of the Early Occupation of Sicily Project, Assistant Professor Ilaria Patania is excavating previously unexplored coastal and underwater cave sites near southern Sicily to understand the path and fate of those early residents. Patania and her collaborators have recovered traces of human occupation — such as stone tools — and found three new sites that contain potentially important archaeological sediments. “What we are looking for is not just the first person who arrived, but the first community,” Patania said.

The Ampersand | Spring 2024

29

(Photo courtesy of Ilaria Patania)

30

FEATURES

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The research lab of the future by

JENNY BIRD + CHRIS WOOLSTON

Picture a scientist or scholar at work. Do you see them in a library? A lab surrounded by beakers and microscopes? Maybe they’re out in the field taking soil samples or conducting interviews. While these triedand-true methods still have a place in many researchers’ toolkits, the rapid rise of big data, artificial intelligence, and other digital tools has significantly reshaped the academic landscape.

To take advantage of these once-in-a-generation developments, Arts & Sciences launched a digital transformation initiative to recruit some of the brightest minds in nearly every field. Spearheaded by Feng Sheng Hu, the Richard G. Engelsmann Dean of Arts & Sciences, that effort has led to the hiring of nearly 20 digital and data specialists, the creation of new computational tools, unprecedented collaboration across disciplines, and groundbreaking discoveries. We invite you to step inside the research lab of the future to see how Arts & Sciences’ faculty members are transforming their fields of study.

(Illustrations: Daniel Fishel)

32

FEATURES

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Digital culture under the microscope Raven Maragh-Lloyd explores the role of non-traditional activism and social media algorithms Raven Maragh-Lloyd knew that building an academic career around the constantly evolving fields of politics, culture, and technology would require a focus on the bigger picture: “I learned early in my career that I chose to study a moving target.” Joining WashU in 2021 as an assistant professor of African and African American studies and film and media studies was a “dream job,” allowing her to focus on both areas equally as she explored culture, race, and Blackness in digital media. In 2024, Maragh-Lloyd published her first book, “Black Networked Resistance: Strategic Rearticulations in the Digital Age,” a counter-narrative to mainstream ideas about Black activism during the early years of the Black Lives Matter movement. “I wanted to make visible the non-traditional forms of activism that I saw Black users engaging in online that weren’t getting as much traction and legitimization,” she said. Combining case studies and focus groups with an analysis of more than 1,000 Instagram and Twitter posts, Maragh-Lloyd has been able to explore the role of memes, humor, and play as methods for critiquing racism. She also took a leading role in a three-year, $1.7 million project from the Department of Defense’s Minerva Research Initiative, which aimed to study online influence campaigns and misinformation. While the project was recently halted by a round of government cuts, Maragh-Lloyd and collaborators plan to use surveys and focus groups in the U.S., Ukraine, and Kenya to examine how people perceive algorithms and the accuracy of online information. Maragh-Lloyd is especially interested in understanding user engagement. “What societal, legal, and cultural factors lead you to tweet the way you tweet? Are there certain phrases that you don’t use, or searches you don’t make, because you’re concerned about being flagged?” “You can’t get that information just by looking at a platform,” she said. “You have to talk to people.” This focus on digital transformation extends to her classroom, where MaraghLloyd teaches “Cultural Analysis of Social Media Algorithms,” a film and media studies course that encourages undergraduates to bring their own expertise and lived experiences to the classroom as they explore how technology interacts with society. While digital technology and social media platforms continue to evolve at a rapid pace, Maragh-Lloyd has found a way to navigate the turbulent waters by focusing on human connection. “When you focus on people over platforms, you don’t have to chase the latest tech disruption.”

34

FEATURES

A chemist at the computer Robert Wexler uses computational power to see new possibilities for green energy Not all chemists work with pipettes and bubbling flasks. Robert Wexler, assistant professor of chemistry, uses the principles of quantum physics and high-powered computing to predict and design new materials that could help fuel a revolution in green energy. Through digital chemistry, Wexler can tinker with compounds and discover new combinations without ever entering a lab. “Running simulations of different materials isn’t just useful for discovery,” he said. “It’s really helpful for understanding how a material works at the atomic level.” Wexler, previously a postdoctoral researcher at Princeton University, came to WashU in 2022 under Arts & Sciences’ digital transformation initiative. “I was excited to join a university where so many researchers were taking a computational approach in their various fields,” he said. “I knew I would fit right in.” Naturally, some of those like-minded researchers have become collaborators. Wexler is working with Robert Lunde, an assistant professor of statistics and data science, to better

understand the statistical uncertainties that come with building theoretical compounds on a computer. Wexler’s work may be digital, but it has profound real-world implications. He’s focused on finding materials that can help break the chemical bonds in water in order to produce hydrogen gas, a promising alternative to fossil fuels. Hydrogen is also an important ingredient in industrial chemicals and pharmaceuticals. In 2023, the U.S. Department of Energy awarded a $1.25 million grant to Wexler and collaborators across the country for a project to develop new materials that could produce hydrogen fuel from water using solar heat. After Wexler developed the virtual material — a variation of the perovskite crystals often used in solar panels — he worked with an outside team of chemists and chemical engineers, who turned the theoretical substance into reality. Experiments showed that this material and other variations were just as impressive as their digital versions. “The properties beautifully matched our predictions,” he said. “It’s exciting to make cool materials, but it’s even more exciting to know exactly why the materials behave the way they do,” Wexler said. “Modern computing power has opened up a new world of opportunities for chemists to understand and control the behavior of matter, atom by atom.”

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Disinformation by the numbers Christopher Lucas takes a data-driven approach to investigating our most pressing political questions Christopher Lucas spends a lot of his time researching how digital technology affects American political attitudes — a topic that, for many, triggers a sense of existential dread. But Lucas’s innovative research has found there might be less to worry about than previously feared. In 2020, the associate professor of political science set out to study the impact of political deepfakes, synthesized video and audio clips in which a person’s face, body, or voice has been digitally altered. “There’s a popular perception that this type of media will undermine our ability to learn accurate information about politics,” he said. But after surveying more than 5,700 people nationwide, he found that deepfake videos had no greater influence on the American public than any other type of disinformation campaign. For another study, Lucas and colleagues turned their focus to YouTube’s recommendation algorithms. They wanted to know if the algorithms sent people down online rabbit holes that led to politically extreme content, or if people who ended up viewing extremist videos had a preexisting appetite for them. Once again, they found no evidence that the algorithms fueled political extremism.

While there’s no guarantee that emerging technologies won’t pose threats in the future, Lucas said the results should offer some sense of relief: “We haven’t found evidence for the potentially hyperbolic concerns that these technologies pose a threat to democracy.” Lucas, who joined WashU’s top-ranked Department of Political Science in 2018, is helping further grow the department’s national reputation for data-driven social science. A faculty affiliate with WashU’s Division of Computational & Data Sciences, his research has leveraged emerging technologies to investigate a range of topics. For his research on political communication, he developed a data analysis tool that examines minute vocal variations to explore not just what politicians say, but how they say it. Another project, supported by Arts & Sciences’ Incubator for Transdisciplinary Futures, involves analyzing police body camera footage to determine what causes police-civilian encounters to escalate or deescalate. That project brings together multiple data-minded researchers including Andrew Jordan, assistant professor of economics, and Soumendra Lahiri, the Stanley A. Sawyer Professor in Mathematics and Statistics. “All of these technologies are transforming research and, similarly, transforming politics,” he said. “It’s an ever-changing landscape, and it will be for a while.”

A new department leverages the power of big data Launched in July 2023 under the guidance of world-renowned statistician Xuming He, the new Department of Statistics and Data Science has assembled a team of talented faculty members who are on track to make WashU a leader in statistical research with real-world impact. Recent hires include Bo Li, the Stanley A. Sawyer Professor of Statistics & Data Science and the former chair of statistics at the University of Illinois. Li specializes in the complex data underlying environmental science and public health issues. Assistant Professor Ran Chen works on reinforcement learning and data-driven decision making with implications for business and health care. And Associate Professor Joe Guinness studies large data sets in Earth science. Guinness, AB ’07, returned to his alma mater to help launch the department. To prepare undergraduates for careers in this burgeoning field, he plans to survey alumni and talk to local employers about what they’re looking for in graduates.

We want students to learn the principles behind the tools of data and statistics so they can apply them to the real world,” Guinness said.

36

MEMORIES & MILESTONES

A memorable career Henry “Roddy” Roediger III, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor, retires from Arts & Sciences with a legacy of leadership in the field of memory science.

by

CHRIS WOOLSTON

Like other retiring faculty members before him, Henry “Roddy” Roediger III, the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor of Psychological & Brain Sciences, has many fond memories of his time at WashU. He also happens to have expert insight into how those mental images were created and stored. Roediger built a remarkable career studying the psychology of memory, the fragile mental impressions we gather, cultivate, and discard throughout our lives. Over the decades, he propelled the field of cognition forward while helping develop WashU’s Department of Psychological & Brain Sciences, one of the most productive and vibrant psychology departments in the country. The department hit its stride after Roediger became chair in 1996. During his eight years in the role, the faculty nearly doubled in size and their research expanded into new fields, including brain imaging. “It was a time when other psychology departments were shrinking, but we were able to hire some top talent,” Roediger said. “We really made a splash.” The momentum has continued and, nearly 30 years after Roediger arrived, psychological and brain sciences has fully lived up to his original expectations. “Roddy’s tenure as chair was truly transformative,” said Jeff Zacks, the Edgar James Swift Professor in Arts & Sciences and current department chair. “He hired a lot of great people and provided exceptional mentorship to junior faculty. He also led by example, continuing his highly impactful research career while taking on major leadership and editorial roles in the field.” Roediger’s work has made an impact in several areas of memory research. Just before Roediger arrived at WashU, he teamed with Kathleen McDermott to develop a paradigm that became popular in the study of false memories. He and McDermott, also a professor in the department, showed that people can easily develop false memories of hearing specific words when they hear

The ampersand | Spring 2025 37

a series of related words. For example, when people hear “bed, rest, awake, tired, dream,” they often remember the word “sleep” as having been presented in the list. The wellestablished phenomenon is now known as the Deese-RoedigerMcDermott paradigm, or DRM. In 2017, Roediger was elected to the National Academy of Sciences, and he was chair of the psychology section of the American Association for the Advancement of Science from

led to the book “Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning.” Co-authored by Mark McDaniel, professor emeritus of psychological and brain sciences, it has sold more than 1.5 million copies. Of the courses he’s led over the years, Roediger most enjoyed “Introduction to Memory Studies,” a first-year seminar he co-taught with friend and colleague James Wertsch, the David R. Francis Distinguished Professor who retired last year. The

At a time when other psychology departments were shrinking, we hired some top talent and really made a splash. 2017 to 2020. He was elected president of the Association for Psychological Science in 2003. He twice served as Arts & Sciences’ dean of academic planning, most recently from 2013 to 2015. He currently serves as chair of the psychology section of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Roediger is particularly proud of his work in the field of education. From 2003 to 2015, he was the lead investigator on a $8.7 million project funded by the James S. McDonnell Foundation that studied ways to apply research findings on memory and cognitive development to the classroom. Among other things, the team showed that testing can teach students how to access and retain information. “Students need to learn how to retrieve information, not just how to cram more information into their brains,” Roediger said. The project

course explored memories created by individuals as well as collective memories of monumental events, such as World War II. “Collective memories help shape who we are as a people,” Roediger said, “but they are not uniform.” Roediger will officially retire in June, but he’s unlikely to slow down. As a professor emeritus, he’ll continue research projects, focusing primarily on collective memory and education research. He is the co-principal investigator of an ongoing $90 million National Science Foundation project that is designed to innovate science education. Whether he’s looking back or looking ahead, Roediger said he treasures his time at WashU. “I’ve been very fortunate to have so many amazing colleagues and talented students.”

Roediger says working with students was a highlight of his time at WashU. His research on memory and learning transformed classroom practices across the country.

38

FACULTY BOOKSHELF

Dispatches from the Dakhla Oasis A new book from Associate Professor Nicola Aravecchia reveals crucial clues to the early spread of Christianity and life in the Egyptian desert.

by

JENNY BIRD

For two decades, Nicola Aravecchia has been working in Egypt’s Western Desert, uncovering the hidden history of Christianity in the Dakhla Oasis. In 2022, the associate professor of classics, art history, and archaeology became the archaeological field director at Amheida, a Greco-Roman city where the team discovered one of Egypt’s earliest Christian churches. Aravecchia’s latest book, "Early Christianity at Amheida (Egypt’s Dakhla Oasis): A Fourth-Century Church," offers a final archeological report on the discovery. He sat down with the Ampersand to discuss his fieldwork.

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Nicola Aravecchia and a team of researchers uncovered a fourth-century church in Egypt. WashU graduate students Claire Lyman and Mary Sulavik joined Aravecchia on a trip to a tomb in the Dakhla Oasis. (Credit: Amheida Project)

Tell us a bit about the work you’ve been doing at Amheida. Amheida (ancient Trimithis) is one of Egypt’s most intact archeological sites from the late Roman/early Christian periods. It was abandoned at the end of the fourth century CE, but the sand that covered the site kept it well preserved. Our excavations have provided new insights into the spread of Christianity to this geographically remote part of the Roman empire. We’ve also found evidence — a Roman-style bath, a school with Greek rhetorical exercises painted on the wall, paintings with classical themes — that people there adopted the Greek language and had an affinity for Greco-Roman-style culture and customs.

Can you describe a typical day at Amheida? Our excavation season is from late December through the beginning of February. As the field director, I’m present the entire time we are excavating. Our group includes experts from all over the world, including ceramicists, zooarchaeologists, physical anthropologists, and numismatists who specialize in coins. We are also joined by graduate students from WashU and local workmen. We wake up at 5:30 a.m. and by 7 a.m. we are excavating. There’s a dig house at the edge of the site where we keep supplies and bulky finds that we can’t easily transport. By 1 p.m. it’s too hot to continue digging, so we switch to documenting our findings.

What are the most surprising discoveries you’ve made? One of the most exciting moments at Amheida was the 2013 discovery of three perfectly preserved funerary crypts below the sanctuary of the church. The crypts were in pristine condition

and included sealed tombs for Christians who lived at Amheida in the mid-fourth century CE, which is, as far as I know, the oldest Christian funerary crypt ever found in Egypt. Most of the burials were under the sanctuary, which would have been the most sacred spot, often reserved for bishops and priests. But out of the 17 bodies found in the church, only four were adult males and only one of the latter was interred in the underground crypts. The rest were women and children, which raises important questions and challenges our preconceived notions.

You are a classicist, an archeologist, and an art historian. Which of those hats do you wear the most when excavating? I’m a field archeologist so, frankly, I’m happiest in the field. I’m passionate about bringing to life the experiences of those no longer with us. This can be a sensitive prospect when we are dealing with human remains, and we try to do it with the utmost respect. My goal is to reconstruct and honor their lived experiences, especially for people who did not exist in written records.

How much more excavation is there left to do at Amheida? I often call Amheida the Pompeii of the desert. After 20 years of work, we’ve excavated about 1%. There have been seven books — including my recent one — and numerous articles to come from this project. There’s enough excavation work at Amheida to last several lifetimes.

Browse more books on the digital Arts & Sciences faculty bookshelf.

artsci.wustl.edu/FacultyBookshelf

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NOTES OF GRATITUDE

Honoring Alumni Impact Every year, Arts & Sciences recognizes a few alumni who demonstrate the ideals of a liberal arts education through their lives, work, and impact on the world. We asked this year’s Distinguished Alumni Award recipients to offer some words of wisdom and reflect on their favorite WashU memories.

Ruth DeFries, AB ’76 DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD

David Conner, AB ’74 DEAN’S MEDAL

Conner is an international businessman and philanthropist with extensive experience in economic development in the Asia-Pacific region. A WashU emeritus trustee, he has established a research fund at the School of Medicine, a university-wide scholarship, and a professorship in medical anthropology. WHAT’S YOUR ADVICE TO STUDENTS? Appreciate the meaning of the word “university.” It’s a universe, a massive buffet of experiences to sample. Go to the theater. Take a music class. Attend the speaker programs at Graham Chapel. Enjoy the smorgasbord of experiences that WashU offers. You’ll never regret it. WHAT’S ONE OF YOUR FAVORITE THINGS ABOUT WASHU? WashU is a global and local institution all in one. It’s both/and, not either/or. That’s one of the things that makes the place so special.

(Illustrations: Kristen Wang)

DeFries is the Denning Family Professor of Sustainable Development at Columbia University and co-dean emeritus of the Columbia Climate School. She uses digital technology to study natural resource demands and their effects on food security, biodiversity conservation, and tropical forests. WHAT MAKES THE LIBERAL ARTS SO IMPORTANT? Many of the issues the world faces are rooted in history and our understanding of different places. A liberal arts education helps you appreciate that complex problems don ’ t have simple answers. We need to take the time to learn from history and from people who are very different from us. HOW DO YOU CHOOSE YOUR RESEARCH? I’m always looking for research that makes a tangible difference you can see in the world. As researchers and scientists, how can we generate information that leads to a positive difference on the ground?

Hear more from these alumni on what inspires them and how Arts & Sciences has impacted their lives.

artsci.wustl.edu/DAA25

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Chelsea Hirschhorn, AB ’06 EARLY CAREER ACHIEVEMENT AWARD

Hirschhorn is the founder and CEO of Frida, an awardwinning global company dedicated to providing essential products for babies and parents — and removing the taboo that can surround postpartum care. Before founding her own company, she worked on the legal teams for the New York Mets and Miami Marlins. WHAT’S YOUR FAVORITE PLACE ON CAMPUS? Definitely the quad. It wasn’t just about the big celebrations, but also the in-between moments — the leaves changing in the fall, that feeling of a crisp new academic year. It was where a bunch of different interests crossed, literally and metaphorically. ANY LIFE LESSONS FOR YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS? Real impact happens at the intersection of what you’re great at and what you’re passionate about.

Michael Kumar, AB ’89 DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD

Kumar is deputy chairman and interim group chief financial officer for the Klesch Group, an independent refiner. He previously worked at Morgan Stanley. At WashU, Kumar has been a member of the Arts & Sciences National Council since 2012 and served as a gift co-chair for his class’s 25th reunion. WHO WAS YOUR FAVORITE PROFESSOR? The great Hyman Minsky. He broke everything down into economics and taught us to look at things a different way. He was a Cardinals aficionado, and he used to say, “Baseball is not a game of runs, it’s a game of outs. Whoever gets to 27 outs first wins.” WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR STUDENTS? If you want to be successful — emotionally, financially, or in your career — you should do two things: Nurture your long-term relationships and never stop learning.

Henry Warshaw, AB ’76, MBA ’79 DISTINGUISHED ALUMNI AWARD

Warshaw is the co-founder and president of a national real estate development firm based in St. Louis. He is actively involved in the St. Louis and WashU communities and serves on WashU’s Board of Trustees as well as the boards of Barnes-Jewish Hospital, the Goldfarb School of Nursing, and the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival. He is also a member of Olin Business School’s National Council. WHAT IS YOUR FIRST MEMORY OF WASHU? Walking up the Brookings steps. There were students playing Frisbee on the quad, everything was so warm and wonderful. It turns out that was the nicest weather St. Louis has had in 50 years! WHAT WAS THE BEST PART OF YOUR EXPERIENCE AT WASHU? Meeting my wife. We were in graduate school, and we met at a party. We’ve been married for 42 years. Our daughter, Eleanor, is about to work on her third graduate degree from WashU.

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PERSPECTIVE

Rediscovering the humanities through data science by

ZEINA DABOUL

(Illustration: Kristen Wang)

When I was in high school, I felt like I had to shrink my world into a single, predetermined path where all subsequent choices had to fit a narrative that led to medical school and a career as a pathologist. I joined the national science honor society, the national math honor society, the volunteering club, and the medical club. Everything I did was to build the perfect resume that showed a sincere dedication to medicine.

But I had other interests. Reading books and editing essays? “Yeah, that’s just a hobby,” I told myself. Digital design, the class that was the most gratifying of my high school career? “That can stay on the sidelines.” The barely functional HTML websites I spent hours working on? “They’re not serious.” I entered high school knowing what the next 10 years of my life would look like, and those hobbies had no place in it. By the end of the 11th grade, I realized my single-minded pursuit of medicine would come at the sacrifice of everything else I enjoyed, creating a one-dimensional individual. When I came to WashU, I discovered that computer science offered something medicine could not: the fluidity and flexibility to discover intersections between fields and, more importantly, to create my own. I studied AI, cybersecurity, and web design. I met others who floated between disciplines, a reality unimaginable when I was in high school. One of those students was a close friend studying computer science and English, majors I initially saw as incompatible. English is a personal study, requiring close reading and meticulous examination. It’s nuanced, ornate, and innately human. Computer science, on the other hand, is mathematical and formulaic. How could two contradictory areas effectively combine? My perspective shifted drastically when my friend introduced me to the digital humanities. At the time, she was taking “Introduction to Digital Humanities” with Gabi Kirilloff, an assistant professor of English. Students in the course used web scraping and other computational methods to look at the usage of Eurocentric terminology in Wikipedia entries.

Student researchers worked with Claudia Carroll and Gabi Kirilloff to explore literary bias and style in GPT, an AI model that processes and generates human-like text.

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I can’t imagine a better introduction to the field. My friend was investigating topics I was interested in, using digital tools I was familiar with, and arriving at conclusions that would have normally required months. Data science, I learned, could be a powerful tool for answering humanistic inquiries. My own experience with the course the following semester solidified this understanding, especially when Claudia Carroll, a postdoctoral research associate co-teaching the class, tasked us with writing an essay about the history of AI using ChatGPT. I knew ChatGPT’s writing skills weren’t brilliant but I didn’t expect them to be quite so lacking. I fought with the machine to arrive at a somewhat effective outline of an essay. The initial drafts were littered with circular reasoning and repetition. ChatGPT presented no concrete ideas and ended almost every paragraph with the same platitude: “Assessing creativity in AI is a complex matter.” This unusual assignment illustrated the process and nuances of blending technology and humanistic inquiry. Working this way is not an abandonment of traditional literary analytical methods. Instead, I found that using AI necessitated a heightened — and deeply human — process of analysis and revision. The method I used for the essay was integral to my work on another project with professors Kirilloff and Carroll: an investigation of AI and literary style. Reading AI-generated passages in the style of famous authors engaged analytical skills I had used since grade school while also challenging

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my understanding of literary concepts: What measures best quantify similarities between sentences? How can we best convert a word, sentence, or paragraph into data? Are those numerical representations even accurate? Thanks to my earlier coursework in computer science, I had the technical skills to analyze the generated text using a variety of methods. Applying those techniques, however, required the literary proficiency to recognize when the outputs were wrong. I had to approach problems from multiple perspectives and in new ways. This research experience reinforced my commitment to avoiding the same single-mindedness that had characterized my high school career. It proved to me that my interests do not have to exist in isolation. My identity as a reader can work in conjunction with my technical abilities and creativity. This realization has transformed my understanding of the two fields. An interdisciplinary approach can reveal insights that would be impossible to answer using either lens alone. Bridging the divide between the humanities and data science will answer some of the most important questions about the human experience, past and present. I’m excited to be a part of it. Zeina Daboul is a junior majoring in computer science with minors in Data Science in the Humanities (DASH) and communication design. She is interning as a digital humanities research assistant with Assistant Professor of English Gabi Kirilloff and postdoctoral research associate Claudia Carroll.

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Art for all

The Ampersand is printed with the sustainability of our planet in mind.

Seven students and professor Elizabeth Childs helped fulfill the Saint Louis Art Museum’s mission of “Dedicated to Art and Free to All” by spending a semester studying the art of Vincent van Gogh and making his famous works accessible to those with visual impairments. The students ran audio description tours for visually impaired museum guests through a partnership with the museum and MindsEye Radio. “I wanted the students to think about the difference between the academic and critical museum community and the larger public,” said Childs, the Etta and Mark Steinberg Professor of Art History. (Credit: Jillian Lepak)