News

Carla Bailey, director of learning and development for Human Resources at WashU, has been named one of Women We Admire’s “Top 50 Women Leaders of St. Louis for 2024” for her development and delivery of leadership and team-building programs and workshops.

Siteman Cancer Center – based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis – soon will open a new home for world-class cancer care. The nine-story, 657,250-square-foot building, located on the Washington University Medical Campus and dedicated exclusively to outpatient cancer care, will welcome its first patients Sept. 30. The state-of-the-art building, designed specifically with cancer patients in mind, incorporates an innovative model of care – the first for cancer care in the region.

Lisa Weingarth, senior advisor for St. Louis initiatives at WashU, has been appointed to the board of the United Way of Greater St. Louis. She is serving a three-year term on the board of directors and a one-year term on the executive committee.

Washington University in St. Louis has launched a new partnership with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Eastern Missouri to support high school students in the organization’s Big Futures college readiness initiative. Starting this fall, WashU Undergraduate Admissions will work with students and their families to demystify the college application and financial aid processes.

Though students had yet to return to campus, WashU’s on-campus polling place saw nearly double the voter turnout in the Missouri Primary Election this month, compared to April’s Municipal Election. Though the two elections are very different in scope, races and initiatives, the steady turnout at the WashU polling place, hosted by the Gephardt Institute and the St. Louis County Board of Elections, was a welcome sight for the university. 

A new funding program for Washington University in St. Louis-affiliated startups focuses on strengthening the St. Louis region. The WashU Venture Network Follow-on Investments is a joint effort between WashU’s Skandalaris Center for Interdisciplinary Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the “In St. Louis, For St. Louis” initiative. It will award up to $150,000 each year to companies with WashU ties that previously have been awarded funding through Arch Grants, the local nonprofit that awards equity-free grants to startups. The goal is to support startups with a high probability of remaining in St. Louis after the grant period is complete.

When a WashU student becomes a St. Louis Fellow, they make a commitment to serve St. Louis effectively and responsibly, immersing themselves in the community and finding ways to contribute to positive progress in the region. As part of this commitment, St. Louis Fellows participate in Engage STL Days, during which they visit local neighborhoods and engage with community members.  

As part of the St. Louis Fellows Program, Harlem Taylor ‘27 and Daniel Niu ’26 worked at Cortex Innnovation Community this summer, supporting the organization’s mission to “accelerate inclusive economic growth in St. Louis.”  

WashU Olin Business School’s entrepreneurship program will award two $25,000 grants in December to WashU-founded or St. Louis-based startups.

In the spring 2024 semester, students in Assistant Professor Kelley Van Dyck Murphy’s Fields + Frames course created temporary public art installations in St. Louis’ Cortex Innovation District. The course was funded by a grant from the Office for Socially Engaged Practice and a teaching grant from the Sam Fox School.

Mark Kamimura-Jiménez has been instrumental in Washington University’s efforts to center diversity and inclusion for the entire student body and university community, fostering a learning environment that enriches and supports students from all backgrounds.

The Great Rivers Biennial, an arts collaboration between the Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis (CAM) and the Gateway Foundation that spotlights and challenges local artists, will open at CAM on September 6. Three St. Louis artists have been chosen to display new work including Ronald Young, a WashU alum who is known for his use of mixed-media and sculptural assemblage. Young uses found materials (for instance, ropes, bricks, and nails) to create works that speak to his environment and the resilient history of Black Americans.

A new cancer center, under construction for three years, will open to patients at the end of September. Siteman Cancer Center’s new nine-story, 657,250-square-foot building, located at 4500 Forest Park Ave. on Washington University’s medical school campus, is slated to open Sept. 30. Siteman, a collaboration of BJC Health Care’s Barnes-Jewish Hospital and Washington University School of Medicine, said the building will be dedicated exclusively to outpatient cancer care.

A 2019 Washington University Environmental Racism report found Black and low-income residents bear the brunt of the region’s unhealthy air quality. The report was a breath of fresh air to those affected by the region’s poor air quality. It was also a wake-up call for churches within the report’s most at-risk communities, many of which stepped up to work toward drastically increasing the area’s air quality monitoring capability.

When Kamala Harris and Donald Trump faceoff in a presidential debate Tuesday in Philadelphia, the atmosphere will be much different than what’s taken place at Washington University for more than 30 years.

Missouri Botanical Garden has named Lúcia Lohmann as its next president, effective Jan. 2. Lohmann, who will also serve as director and George Engelmann professor of botany at Washington University in St. Louis, is the eighth president in MoBot’s history and its first woman president, officials said.

Washington University and BioSTL are hoping to transform St. Louis into a global neuroscience leader through its NEURO360 initiative. BioSTL’s CEO Donn Rubin tells Anthony Morabith that big things are in store for the future of St. Louis.

St. Louis Inno is highlighting eight people, all under 25, all entrepreneurs, most of them connected in some way to Washington University, St. Louis’ magnet for the talented and driven, who have created a business that will likely be neither their last nor only venture of their lifetimes.

Neuro360, a coalition of post-secondary institutions, local and state institutions, businesses, health care and trade groups led by Washington University and nonprofit innovation hub BioSTL, is bidding for up to $160 million in funding from the U.S. National Science Foundation. The coalition is aimed at advancing neuroscience research and commercialization in the St. Louis region

The City of St. Louis is prone to an urban heat island effect, a phenomenon caused by dense areas of pavement, flat roofs, brick buildings and other surfaces that absorb heat from the sun, radiating it back into the surrounding air. Research published by Climate Central shows that some urban areas see temperatures as much as 10 degrees hotter than rural areas that enjoy more widespread vegetation and shade. In St. Louis, the Midwest Climate Collaborative at Washington University works to study heat islands and their effects on quality of life in the region. The university’s Tyson Research Center has been actively gathering data and studying the impacts of heat islands, too.

The Financial Times recently showcased the International Institute of St. Louis’s efforts to grow the St. Louis metro population by recruiting immigrants and refugees to live and work in the area. The Financial Times article also said the St. Louis metro area “stands out in both its method and ambition” to increase foreign-born communities and in how nonprofit, governmental, and business communities have come together to support the effort.

When Michael Brown Jr., an unarmed Black teenager, was fatally shot in 2014 by a white police officer and his body left in the street under the August sun, the small St. Louis suburb of Ferguson roiled and plunged into crisis. The protests drew activists from across the nation, amplified the national Black Lives Matter movement and fueled larger questions about race in America. And at a more grass-roots level, it created a political incubator of emerging local leaders: A new generation of young protesters who came of age during the Ferguson uprising have found ways to chip away at the racial disparities in Ferguson and nearby St. Louis, shifting from protests to politics and policies.

Sometimes life has a way of coming around full circle and during a recent college visit for our daughter, I was reminded of just what a great city St. Louis is. We stayed in the Cortex district, had dinner in the Central West End and were struck by how great the city looked. If you drew a straight line from Wash U, through Forest Park, continued through BJC’s campus, through Cortex and ended up at Union Station you would see a city on the upswing.

More people are working in the St. Louis region than ever before, according to a report from the U.S. Department of Labor. The St. Louis region gained nearly 31,000 workers over the past year, making it the seventh-best U.S. metro area for job growth. The region broke through the top 10 for the first time since 1990. The number of people working in the 14-county region that includes the Metro East has risen 2.16% this year — surpassing the national rate of 1.7%.

From the Arch grounds south along the Mississippi River, historic manufacturing buildings will soon be a center for advanced manufacturing. Clayton-based Real Estate investment firm Millstone Company is the newest partner in the Gateway South project by Good Developments Group. President Bob Millstone tells KMOX he signed onto the project because he sees great potential of economic growth for the region.

Experiencing the best of St. Louis is as simple as figuring out what the Gateway City does well—and leaning into that. Our list draws on more than a decade of research, and while it’s by no means exhaustive, you could use it as a cheat sheet to take pride in the region—or as a bucket list for visitors.

The city of St. Louis’ Community Development Administration (CDA) said Wednesday it has awarded $3.7 million through its Neighborhood Transformation Grants program. The funding is being provided through programs focused on community-driven development, affordable housing, vacant lot beautification and neighborhood planning. CDA began awarding its Neighborhood Transformation Grants in 2023, starting the program with funds from the federal American Rescue Plan (ARPA). 

Delmar Divine, the mixed-use redevelopment of the former St. Luke’s Hospital built on the “Delmar Divide,” will undergo a second phase of development. Construction is expected to begin later this year to add about 80 new apartments, additional offices and community space at Delmar Divine, located at the former St. Luke’s Hospital at 5501 Delmar Blvd. in the city of St. Louis’ West End neighborhood.

Saint Louis Zoo WildCare Park released a new fly-through rendering video and an economic impact report projecting that the project will generate over $660 million in economic activity across the St. Louis region within the next 10 years. WildCare Park, a safari park and conservation center under development in north St. Louis County, is expected to open to the public in 2027.

It was lost in plain sight: a Chinatown in downtown St. Louis that existed for nearly a century. It never made it to the history books and barely made the news. Now there’s a widespread effort to honor these stories in light of recognizing the city’s shared past.