In August, global robotics competition First Lego League challenged children to design a robot to help archaeologists. The task would demand skills in engineering, design and technology. But, first and foremost, teams needed a fundamental understanding of the discipline itself — what archaeologists do, where they work, what tools they use. 

Enter Patania, an assistant professor of archaeology in Arts & Sciences and an expert in both land and underwater archaeology. She’s not sure how First Lego League teams found her (“We Googled ‘archaeology and caves’ and Dr. Patania’s name popped up,” explained one fourth grader), but she responded to every query. 

“Archaeology isn’t a career a lot of parents are encouraging their sons and daughters to pursue, so when students come to me interested in learning more, I’m always going to say yes,” Patania said.  

For teams based in the St. Louis region, Patania went one step further, inviting them to campus, leading them on a mock dig, providing feedback on their designs and connecting them to fellow faculty members and students. Last month, she invited the teams to present their designs and share their competition experiences at Friday Archaeology, a public showcase hosted by the department.    

Among the teams: Bayless Junior High School’s Team Dig-Bee, which built a sentiment-sifting robot; a Girl Scout Troop that developed a robotic brush to clean artifacts; the Rockwood Eager Eagles, which prototyped an underwater robot; the KME Knights, which created a robotic dog to carry tools; and the Wild Robots, a group of preschool friends who reunited to construct a robotic spider that can crawl cave walls. 

And, finally, the Lego Legendz of the Islamic Foundation of Greater St. Louis, which built a rover prototype that can navigate caves. The team took third place in a regional First Lego League competition and qualified for the Western Edge international invitational in Long Beach, Calif., where it will compete in May against teams from around the globe. 

“Our robot is named Steve, like the Minecraft character,” eighth grader Taariq Lateef told the crowd.  

Taariq originally wanted to name the robot Flipster because the robot could flip if it hit an obstacle in the cave. But when Patania explained that flipping would damage the robot’s sensitive equipment, the team changed its design. That was one of many pivotal pieces of feedback Patania provided, Taariq said.

“We first had tread wheels, but Dr. Patania said they would get stuck in a lot of caves,” Taariq explained. “So we totally changed the wheels so they could handle rocks and silt and other surfaces. For us, it was helpful to hear her talk about what it’s like for her in the field. We took all of that and put it into our design.” 

T.R. Kidder, the Edward S. and Tedi Macias Professor of anthropology in Arts & Sciences, said he was impressed with the sophistication of the students’ designs and their awareness of the field’s literal and physical costs. One team even hosted a bake sale for the department. He hopes the experience will lead some of the students to a career in archaeology.

“Archaeology is engineering. Archaeology is anthropology and history. It brings the humanities and STEM together to solve problems and answer big questions,” said Kidder, who has engaged Louisiana residents in his research at the Poverty Point World Heritage site. “We are all part of a broader scholarly scientific community. As archaeologists, we have an obligation to support the community because if we don’t talk to them, they won’t talk to us.” 

Patania also invites community members and children to her dig site in Sicily, where she leads the Early Occupation of Sicily Project.

“It’s important for us to have that community’s knowledge when we do our work; it’s part of our training as archaeologists,” Patania said. “And, for me, it’s also fun and impressive to see the creativity and curiosity of young people.” 

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Hui’s winning paper offers empirical evidence about how an artificial intelligence (AI) copilot can effectively improve transaction outcomes in the real estate industry. The study shows that, when embedded in the workflow of frontline employees, AI assistance can help transactions move faster, improve customer experience and change how value is created and captured.

In the working paper, Hui, of Washington University in St. Louis, and co-authors Lin William Cong, at Nanyang Technological University, and Yushan Zhou, at Chinese University of Hong Kong, studied an AI copilot embedded in a nationwide real estate platform’s chat system in China. When working with buyers, the AI tool gives agents property recommendations and reply scripts. When working with sellers, it provides agents with pricing guidance and listing-title and description suggestions. Agents can use, edit or ignore the AI suggestions, and clients generally do not see the raw AI output.

Using both a field experiment and evidence from an 18-city rollout, the authors find that AI copilot access raised the probability of a listing selling within three months; shortened seller time-on-market and buyer search duration; raised transaction prices; and increased ratings from buyers and sellers after the sale.

Another takeaway for managers: the gains are larger for less-experienced and lower-performing sales representatives. The findings suggest that AI can help narrow gaps in task-specific expertise by supporting recommendation, communication, pricing and listing-related tasks inside existing workflows.

“Much of the conversation around AI in business focuses on whether it can make individual workers more productive. Our study looks at a broader question: When AI supports a frontline intermediary, can it change how an entire transaction works — including search, pricing, speed and customer experience on both sides of the market?” Hui said.

“The evidence suggests that AI can create value when it is embedded directly into existing workflows as decision support,” Hui said. “In this setting, the copilot did not replace agents; it helped them with measurable tasks such as recommendations, communication, pricing guidance and listing text, while agents remained responsible for client-facing decisions.”

Hui said the study’s core findings — namely the reduced search friction, higher match quality, improved customer experience, and the “leveling” effect for newer agents — may be relevant to a variety of sales, advisory and retail businesses in the U.S. The results are especially applicable in businesses where frontline workers help customers navigate complex choices and where AI can support measurable tasks while humans remain responsible for final decisions.  

Richard Mahoney, Olin’s distinguished executive in residence and former chairman and CEO of Monsanto, initiated and funds the Olin Award, which is now in its 19th year.

Reaffirming schoolwide commitment to AI excellence

In today’s rapidly evolving digital landscape, businesses that quickly identify opportunities created by AI and harness its full potential can gain a competitive edge. WashU Olin researchers have been at the forefront of this trend, with practical research that highlights how businesses can use AI to improve productivity, decision-making and customer outcomes across industries.

In fact, eight of the last 10 Olin Awards have recognized research advancing AI and machine learning or used AI to drive the research itself.

Recently, an anonymous donor made a $300,000 pledge to create the Olin AI Research Excellence Fund, which will provide resources for faculty exploring and pushing the boundaries of AI in business.

“Olin Business School is making a broad, schoolwide commitment to AI research that advances both rigorous scholarship and real-world practice,” said Dan Elfenbein, vice dean for research and a professor of organization and strategy at WashU Olin.

“From a research perspective, this commitment builds on, and leverages, more than a decade of experience and dozens of published studies by our faculty that examine machine learning, e-commerce platforms and AI itself. We have been focused on the ways that technology shapes markets and commerce for a long time. The AI commitment is a natural extension of this prior work and builds on the foundation of capabilities that this work generated.”

Olin faculty also are developing new AI models and data tools that advance research. Armed with such tools, researchers can better study topics such as how people respond to news, why certain songs or ideas become “hits” and how AI can amplify — or reduce — bias in decision-making. They also are studying how AI changes pricing, trust and inequality — and pushing the boundaries of business research, Elfenbein said.

“Just as importantly, that frontier work is feeding directly into the classroom,” he said. “We’re equipping students to lead in an AI-shaped economy with the analytical tools, critical judgment and ethical grounding to deploy these technologies responsibly and effectively.”

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WashU Medicine volunteers were also there, supporting runners every step of the way. WashU Medicine served as the official medical provider, joining WashU as a major race sponsor. From well before sunrise to late afternoon, 25 physicians, along with fellows, residents and medical students, stationed themselves along the route to help runners throughout the race.

Clinicians from pediatrics, physical therapy, orthopedics, internal medicine and emergency medicine, alongside trainees, aided a total of 70 patients, including two who required ambulance transport. Although the team was ready to treat anything from serious cardiac concerns and dehydration to scraped knees and twisted ankles, the moderate temperature yielded fewer overall heat- or rain-related injuries than potentially expected.

“I’m thrilled that WashU Medicine has played a bigger role in the event this year,” said Katherine Caldwell, MD, an assistant professor of orthopedic surgery and official race day medical director. “Multiple people expressed that they were very impressed with our team and our ability to work seamlessly with the Greater St. Louis Marathon race coordinators, physical therapy and emergency medical crews.”

In addition to a large medical tent directly across from the finish line, four aid tents lined the 26.2-mile route, ensuring runners were never too far from expert, on-the-spot care.

“WashU and WashU Medicine are in St. Louis, for St. Louis,” Caldwell told the crowd of runners and supporters before the race began. “We are proud to be part of this community, and we’re happy to support our friends and neighbors with fun events like these, and through health care, education and economic growth that makes an impact every day.”

Community impact

In total, 10,000 participants — representing every state in the nation and several other countries — took to the streets in one of several races, including the family fun run, 5K, 10K, half marathon and full marathon.

“I found it exciting to see so many people supporting fitness, promoting prevention and taking charge of their health,” said Jennifer Schmidt, MD, an associate professor of medicine who ran the half marathon this year. “Some people don’t really know about all the services we offer, so being here provides a chance to show the community that we’re accessible, friendly and ready to help them stay healthy, and not just treat them when they’re sick.”

The 80-volunteer-strong team from the WashU Medicine Program in Physical Therapy continued their three-year streak of providing a pre-race stretching session and post-race recovery. Their tent was strategically placed at the end of the finish line chute, where they served approximately 620 runners. WashU Medicine Program in Physical Therapy and Orthopedics also prepared registrants for race day with training tips, emailed to those who opted for additional support.

“As the race has grown, so has WashU Medicine’s physical therapy support,” said Gregory Holtzman, PT, DPT, a professor of physical therapy and orthopedic surgery. “What I love most is how everyone plays a part. We have our senior-most physical therapists working right alongside our first-year learners. Interactions like that can speak volumes to students.”

Numerous WashU Medicine community members laced up their sneakers to promote healthy lifestyles, showing they don’t just talk the talk as physicians but they also walk the walk — or, run the run, in the case of Randall Jotte, MD, a professor of emergency medicine at WashU Medicine, who earned third place for his age group in the half marathon.

“For me, running is as much for my head as my body,” Jotte said. “You might start out the race thinking, ‘Why am I even doing this?’ But you’ll finish feeling like it was one of the most joyful, fulfilling experiences you’ve ever had, surrounded by thousands of strangers cheering, high-fiving and proving how kind people can be even on one of the hardest days they’ve chosen for themselves.”

View here to access enlarged photos from the event.

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That’s why he agreed to join with Mitra Naseh, an assistant professor at the WashU Brown School and founding director of the school’s Forced Migration Initiative, in her quest to foster belonging  among the region’s large Afghan population and to find ways to better connect refugees to the services they need to thrive. 

“This work also reminds us that welcoming is not a measure of individual effort alone. It is a measure of whether our region is prepared to unlock talent, recognize credentials, support families and create pathways to mobility,” Hamilton told attendees at the 2026 William H. Danforth St. Louis Confluence Award Research Showcase April 15 at the Clark-Fox Forum. “That’s why partnerships like these really matter so much. WashU researchers bring rigor, analysis and the ability to see patterns across systems. And community organizations bring trust, proximity and responsibility for what happens. Together, we move forward from insight to action.”

WashU’s Confluence Collaborative for Community Engagement honored Naseh and her community partners for her ongoing research with the Danforth St. Louis Confluence Award. Now in its fourth year, the prize recognizes researchers and community partners who work together to address regional challenges. In addition to Hamilton, Naseh’s community partners include:

Jason Baker, executive director, Monarch Immigrant Services in St. Louis; Haroon Safi, president, U.S. Afghan Chamber of Commerce in St. Louis; Fatema Medhat, Missouri state refugee health coordinator, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants; Aya Kawasaki, interim co-convener, Immigrant Service Providers Network; Lindsay Spencer, program manager, Archway Refugee Connections; Ann Wittman, director, Welcome Neighbor STL; Kara Gebre, program director, Refugee and Immigrant Services & Education; Lina Oleik, training and enrichment manager, Jewish Vocational Service of Kansas City. 

Naseh’s research was born out of a simple question: “We just wanted to know how newly resettled Afghans are doing,” said Naseh, who arrived at WashU in 2022, shortly after a wave of about 600 Afghans resettled in St. Louis.

She found that Afghan families, though poor, were better off than the Afghan communities in Portland. Ore., because of the availability of jobs and low-cost housing. She also found that Afghans who remained deeply connected to others in their own community felt the highest levels of belonging and well-being. Currently, Naseh and her team are studying the barriers between the region’s immigrants and refugees and available services and resources. 

“Our community partners are helping us with language access and the idea is that next year, we will start co-designing solutions for some of the identified barriers and ways to leverage facilitators that help fit the intervention,” Naseh said. 

Baker of Monarch Immigrant Services calls his partnership with Naseh one of the most constructive of his career.

“I have to confess that as someone who has been around community-university partnerships, I was a little skeptical, maybe even a little cynical, as to the motivations of a junior faculty member, new in town, who wanted to talk about data,” Baker recalled. “I am so happy to have said yes.”

Spencer, of Archway Refugee Connections, said her organization already has incorporated some of Naseh’s findings in its programming, which includes English language classes for women and field trips for families. Naseh’s students also provide wrap-around services to Archway families with the highest need. 

“What we know is that if basic needs are not met, people are not able to come into class and feel ready to learn, to make those connections and to build community in St Louis,” Spencer said. “The collaborations that we have established here together is the reason why St Louis is a welcoming city to our immigrants and refugees.”

In addition to the Danforth Award, the Confluence Collaborative announced its 2026 Provost Impact Award for Early Career Community-Engaged Research winner:

REBIRTH: Revitalizing Birth in Rural Communities of Southeast Missouri (Faculty lead: Victoria Brown, postdoctoral research fellow, WashU Medicine. Community partners: Bootheel Perinatal Network, Building Blocks, Missouri Bootheel Regional Consortium, MPower–Mississippi County Health Department, ParentLink, It Takes a Village)

The collaborative also announced the Provost Impact Award winners. They are:

Nourishing Healthy Starts (Faculty lead: Dan Ferris, associate professor of practice, Brown School. Community lead: Kristen Wild, president and CEO, Operation Food Search)

Parents and Children Together–St. Louis: Community Voices Driving Change for Families (Faculty lead: Patricia Kohl, professor, Brown School. Community lead: Sanaria Sulaiman, president and CEO, Vision for Children at Risk)

Black Children’s Joy and Educational Justice: A Portraiture Study on Effectiveness of a School District’s Strategic Plan around Anti-Racism and Wellbeing (Faculty lead: Seanna Leath, associate professor of psychological and brain sciences, Arts & Sciences. Community lead: Sharonica L. Hardin-Bartley, superintendent, University City School District)

Wheelchair user physical activity training intervention to enhance cardiometabolic health (WATCH): A community-based randomized control trial (Faculty lead: Kerri Morgan, associate professor, WashU Medicine. Community lead: Annie Morrow, chief program officer, Paraquad)

Building Pathways: Cultivating Diverse Futures Through K-12 and University Design Education (Faculty lead: Kelley Van Dyck Murphy, associate professor, Sam Fox School. Community lead: Ronda Wallace, principal, Sumner High School)

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The central mission of CONGAS is to understand why Alzheimer’s disproportionately affects Caribbean and Hispanic populations and identify the genetic and molecular drivers behind this disparity. Ultimately, these insights will bring scientists closer to more precise and personalized diagnostic tools and treatments and help identify new drug targets.

The collaborative project is driven by Carlos Cruchaga, PhD, the Barbara Burton and Reuben M. Morriss III Professor in the Department of Psychiatry; Jorge Llibre-Guerra, MD, an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology; and Laura Ibanez, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry, all at WashU Medicine. A fourth collaborator, Victoria Fernandez, PhD, began the work while at WashU Medicine and is now head of the genomics unit at ACE Alzheimer Center Barcelona in Spain.

The study will characterize genetic data, blood biomarkers and large-scale proteomics from about 5,000 people in Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Costa Rica and Spain. These data will then be integrated with more than 70,000 additional genomes, including more than 10,000 from Hispanic and Latino participants from the Alzheimer’s Disease Sequencing Project (ADSP), an NIH-funded effort to broaden Alzheimer’s research in the U.S. beyond European-ancestry populations. Cruchaga, Llibre-Guerra and their collaborators will analyze this massive dataset to discover new risk factors and modifiers to determine whether genes known to be involved in Alzheimer’s exert different effects in people of Caribbean ancestry.

“Countries in the Caribbean provide the ideal environment to dissect genetic risk,” said Cruchaga, who is also the founding director of the NeuroGenomics and Informatics Center at WashU Medicine. “Because they reflect a long history of genetic mixing among people of African, European and Native American ancestry, the known risk genes for Alzheimer’s disease may behave very differently in this population, or novel risk variants not seen in European cohorts may be driving disease. By studying people with an array of different genetic backgrounds, we can discover new risk factors and protective factors, which we can model for potential new interventions and drugs.”

For example, Cruchaga noted that a genetic variant known as ApoE4 is a risk factor for Alzheimer’s disease, but its effect varies between white and Black populations. An international team co-led by Cruchaga found that another gene, TREM2, influenced Alzheimer’s risk, but not in a uniform way: some variants protected people while others increased their risk. As in ApoE4, the differential effect of TREM2 was observed in individuals with African ancestry. Cruchaga and Llibre-Guerra expect the study of Caribbean individuals to reveal more examples like these.

The new study builds on and complements the ongoing Caribbean Aging and Dementia Study (CADAS) and the GR@ACE cohort at ACE Alzheimer Center. CADAS is an NIH-funded, nationally representative, population-based aging study of adults 65 and older in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic that launched in 2021. Researchers recruited participants by going door to door across the islands, an approach to enrollment that removes barriers to participation, such as visiting a clinic, and allows for immediate collection of robust clinical, cognitive, sociodemographic and biological data, including blood samples. The ACE Alzheimer Center is a non-profit institution with over 30 years’ experience in the diagnosis, treatment and study of Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias. It has recruited and banked samples from thousands of individuals, including neurological, neuropsychological and biomarker data.

With the combined dataset from ADSP, CADAS and ACE, Cruchaga, Llibre-Guerra and their collaborators will also investigate how vascular (blood vessel) disease, inflammation and other non-genetic factors contribute to dementia in the Caribbean and Latin America, where “mixed dementia” — a combination of Alzheimer’s and vascular disease affecting the blood vessels of the brain — is more common than it is in the U.S. Those insights could help tailor clinical care for specific populations.

“If we’re able to confirm different genetic effects in this population, that will change how we approach diagnosis, treatment, prevention and the advice we provide to patients,” said Llibre-Guerra, who also serves as the associate director of the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer Network (DIAN) led by WashU Medicine and has led efforts to add Latin American study sites. “This is an opportunity to illuminate an underexplored area in Alzheimer’s disease and related dementia, which will get us closer to precision medicine and more personalized care and evidence-based decisions for patients based on their risk factors.”

Along with that long-term goal, the researchers expect CONGAS to have near-term impact on Alzheimer’s diagnosis and treatment by refining blood-based biomarker tests that are increasingly used to select patients for clinical trials and therapies. Current tests were largely developed using data from people of European descent, which, Cruchaga said, may lead to a higher number of misdiagnoses.

About WashU Medicine

WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with more than 3,000 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the second largest among U.S. medical schools and has grown 83% since 2016. Together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits well over $1 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently among the top five in the country, with more than 2,000 faculty physicians practicing at 130 locations. WashU Medicine physicians exclusively staff Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals — the academic hospitals of BJC HealthCare — and Siteman Cancer Center, a partnership between BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine and the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in Missouri. WashU Medicine physicians also treat patients at BJC’s community hospitals in our region. With a storied history in MD/PhD training, WashU Medicine recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.

Originally published on the WashU Medicine website

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A team of researchers led by Gang Wu, a professor of energy, environmental and chemical engineering at the McKelvey School of Engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, is working to change that. The team is creating a heterostructure catalyst for an anion-exchange membrane water electrolyzer (AEMWE) that splits water into hydrogen and oxygen using electricity from renewable sources. They created the catalyst with two phosphides that gave them an efficient method to extract hydrogen, a valuable yet low-cost source of zero-emissions fuel. 

Wu’s team has been looking for alternatives to catalysts that use expensive platinum group metals. In this research, their idea began with using sunlight, wind or water to create electricity that they could then use to separate hydrogen from water.

“Going from water to hydrogen is a very desirable way we are able to store energy for different applications,” Wu said. “Hydrogen itself can be used as an energy carrier and is useful for different chemical industries and manufacturing.”

By combining two different phosphides, the team created a composite that boosted the catalytic activity in the extraction process.

When the team integrated this combo phosphide catalyst with a nickel iron anode, their cathode outperformed a state-of-the-art cathode made with different materials as well as a PGM benchmark. In addition, they found it could operate at current industry standards for more than 1,000 hours, making it one of the most durable PGM-free cathodes for anion-exchange membrane water electrolyzers, Wu said. 

“Our catalyst showed the lowest resistance across the studied potential range, which suggests the fastest hydrogen adsorption kinetics among the studied catalysts,” Wu said. “This newly achieved performance and durability metrics make our catalyst one of the most promising membrane electrode assemblies for practical anion-exchange membrane water electrolyzers.”

While the team’s experiments were done on a lab scale, they plan to investigate the feasibility of using the cathode at industrial scale.

Liang J, Li Y, Chang C-W, Qiao M, Feng Z, Dun C, Li W-L, Wu G. Designing a dry cathode via hydrogen-bond network regulation at phosphide heterostructure/electrolyte interfaces for alkaline water electrolysis. Journal of the American Chemical Society, published online April 7, 2026, DOI: 10.1021/jacs.6c02768.

This work was financially supported by G. Wu’s startup fund at WashU.

Originally published on the McKelvey Engineering website

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In short, the bill seeks to boost housing supply by streamlining environmental reviews, reforming zoning and regulations, and increasing the production of manufactured homes. The bill also aims to lower costs by offering grants and loans for multifamily developments, as well as for homeowners and landlords trying to repair their homes.

One of the most talked-about aspects of the bill, though, is the provision that would restrict large institutional investors from purchasing additional single-family homes.

Targeting institutional investors may be politically expedient, but it will do little to address the underlying problems that are the true drivers of housing affordability in the U.S. today, according to Carol Camp Yeakey, the Marshall S. Snow Professor of Arts & Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis and co-author of the forthcoming book “When Wall Street is Your Landlord.”

“Economists across the political spectrum are in almost unanimous agreement that corporate investors are not the cause of the housing affordability crisis, but rather a symptom of the crisis,” said Camp Yeakey, who also serves as a professor of public health at the WashU School of Public Health.  

That’s because large institutional investors only own 1-3% of single-family housing stock, according to the U.S. Government Accounting Office, the Urban Institute and other reputable sources. Smaller mom-and-pop investors own 11%. The other 87% of single-family housing is owned by individuals.

Additionally, an analysis of the largest 150 metropolitan areas found no correlation between the share of institutional investor-owned homes in a market and home price appreciation, Camp Yeakey said.

“It is simply misleading to attribute the housing affordability crisis to institutional investors given their small share of the housing market,” she said.

Still, the influx of corporate investors in the housing market remains a cause for concern. Camp Yeakey and her WashU colleagues Vetta Sanders Thompson, the E. Desmond Lee Professor of Racial and Ethnic Diversity at the Brown School, and Will Ross, MD, the Alumni Endowed Professor of Medicine at WashU Medicine, have spent nearly a decade studying the proliferation of corporate investors in U.S. neighborhoods and its broader impacts on public health, education, safety and neighborhood decline.

Camp Yeakey’s 2024 paper, “Corporate investors and the housing affordability crisis: Having Wall Street as your landlord,” published in the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, found corporate investors tend to concentrate their purchases in specific markets where a large share of renters are low-income racial minorities.

The forthcoming book offers a detailed look at three such neighborhoods in St. Louis, Cincinnati and Atlanta, where more than half of the housing is owned by corporate investors. Their research shows that corporate investors maximize profits at the expense of tenant safety and well-being, including massive rent increases, eviction filings, dangerous lack of maintenance, steep fines and more. Long-term, this limits tenants’ ability to build wealth through homeownership.

Corporate investors benefit from the tight housing supply. Addressing that shortage would alleviate both problems.

Econ 101: Supply and demand

Like other goods and services, housing prices increase when the demand is greater than the supply. High mortgage rates and years of underbuilding are unaddressed but persistent contributors to rising prices, Camp Yeakey said.

Last year, online real estate marketplace Zillow estimated that the U.S. had a national housing shortage of approximately 5 million homes. Unless policy addresses the measures that increase housing supply, any legislative impact on prices and affordability will be limited.

Housing affordability has hit a historic low. Whereas 50% of Americans could afford to purchase homes in 2013, just 21% are able to afford homes today, according to an analysis by real estate brokerage Redfin. Housing costs are now rising faster than incomes, and the median age of home buyers has skyrocketed to 53, the highest on record, Camp Yeakey said.

“What the new housing bill provides is the perception of corrective action — void of concrete action — without dealing with the core structural issues in America that make housing too expensive in the first place,” Camp Yeakey said.

Loosening exclusionary local zoning restrictions and building permit requirements to enable the construction of more multifamily housing units is essential to increasing the supply of affordable housing, Camp Yeakey said. The bill includes incentives and grant opportunities for local governments that implement zoning changes, streamlined permitting and density bonuses, which is a step in the right direction.

“It is almost conventional wisdom that the key reason for the housing shortage in America is overly restrictive land use policies and ‘Not in My Back Yard’ local legislative policies that prevent private developers from building types of housing people want and need, where they want it,” Camp Yeakey said.  

“As early as the 1920s, segregation in housing began with explicit racial zoning, followed by years of racial profiling, redlining, racial covenants and blockbusting. It is common practice for local governments to severely restrict the types of housing that can be built in the community and where it can be built, using exclusionary zoning laws, often referred to as ‘snob zoning.’”

According to Camp Yeakey, these exclusionary zoning laws make it more difficult for builders to meet growing housing demand. These laws are so pervasive today that it is illegal to build multifamily housing in three-quarters of American cities, according to the Brookings Institution.

Looking forward

Despite receiving overwhelming support in the Senate, the housing legislation faces a less certain future in the House.

The housing affordability crisis is one of the most significant issues in America today. The continued lack of affordable housing is a major driver of inequality, poverty, poor quality of life and conditions that erode individual health and well-being, Camp Yeakey said.

“Failure to address the true drivers of housing affordability will mean more Americans will be less able to achieve the American dream of homeownership.

“Homeownership serves as an economic engine. It has a multiplier effect, and it generates and creates supportive conditions for humans to advance,” she said. “Affordable housing is the foundation from which other legal entitlements can be achieved and secured.”

“When Wall Street is Your Landlord” is published by Oxford University Press and will be released in July 2026.

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“What does that mean?” asks Palmer, an ISP instructional specialist. “To me, it means students do most of the thinking and talking; try different strategies and explain their thinking; use math, words, tools and materials appropriately; and listen to and respond to each other’s ideas.” 

Their audience: pre-K teachers. Yes, pre-K. 

Many of us remember nursery school as a time for finger painting and story time. It still is. But prekindergarten also is when children learn important math concepts — not just counting, but how to create patterns, recognize shapes, measure objects and compare quantities. To ensure every pre-K student starts kindergarten with those foundational skills, Hazelwood has partnered with ISP’s innovative Math314 program to improve classroom instruction and student outcomes. ISP instructional specialists work closely with the district’s 61 pre-K teachers, providing professional learning programming, one-on-one coaching and lesson planning. 

Two years into the partnership, Hazelwood is seeing gains. Today, 80% of students who complete the district’s pre-K program are assessed as kindergarten-ready, an increase of 27 percentage points compared to 2023. The state average is 55%. Education organizations have taken note. In 2025, the Missouri School Boards’ Association recognized Hazelwood as the Early Childhood Education Program of the Year. 

The district covers nearly 20% of St. Louis County and serves about 17,300 pre-K to 12th grade students. Some 81% of students are Black and 66% qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.

“Students who leave pre-K kindergarten-ready are four times more likely to graduate high school,” said Stacy Ray, Hazelwood’s director of early childhood education. “You don’t really think about that high school graduation journey starting at age 4, but it does.” 

Back at the professional development, Jack Gillespie, a pre-K teacher at Coldwater Creek Elementary, shares how he plans to incorporate math into a future lesson about Jackie Joyner-Kersee. Students will measure each other’s long jumps and record the distance. They will then compare distances to determine who jumped farthest. 

“One activity, many ways for them to build number sense,” Gillespie said. 

‘Our world is so different’

Launched in 2019, Math314 is embedded in elementary, middle and high schools across the region. Its first early childhood pilot, at Julia Goldstein Early Childhood Center in the University City School District, affirmed two truths that ISP’s experts have long understood. One: Early childhood math learning leads to better educational outcomes. And two: Pre-K professional development is often overlooked. 

“Part of the reason that this program even came about is because early childhood teachers were going to traditional professional development that was for higher grade levels,” said Meeks, director of Math314 and school leadership programs. “These early childhood teachers were like, ‘Our world is so different from first grade or fourth grade. So much of math instruction is accessed through play and that is not a part of the conversation. We need something different.’” 

In addition to delivering tailored professional development programming and coaching to all pre-K educators, Math314 trained a cohort of teacher-leaders who mentored new teachers, identified district priorities, developed their own research projects and presented at regional and national education conferences.

Ray said a growing majority of teachers now report being confident in their knowledge of best practices in math instruction. 

“Carmen and her team showed teachers how to move math into the classroom in a way that makes sense and is beneficial,” Ray said. “Now I do a walkthrough, and every teacher is on pace and using the curriculum in a way that works best for their kiddos. Three years ago, if you asked them about math, they would say, ‘Oh, sure, we teach the kids to count.’ Now it’s a whole different thing. I was just in a classroom where they were making bracelets. So they were not only counting the beads, but taking those beads and making patterns and using shapes in different ways. It’s been a huge shift.”

‘I did it!’ 

Over at Armstrong Elementary, pre-K teacher Kimberly Reese is celebrating the number seven. 

“Help me count,” she asks her students, who are spread out on a colorful rug. “We said the number was . . .”

“Seven,” they shout back. “One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six. Seven.”

“Perfect! How many days are in a week?” she asks. 

“Seven,” they call back again. 

After counting the days on a calendar and then reciting the days of the week, it’s center time. The students practice their “level one” voices and then pick a fun seven-related activity. In one corner, students build towers of seven Lego bricks; in another, students roll out ropes of Play-Doh to form the number seven; and at another table, they play with picture cards.

“Which one has seven?” Reese asks. 

“This one,” offers a boy, pointing to a card with six strawberries. 

“Let’s count,” Reese says, and the children count to six. 

“It’s this one,” says another child, counting seven frogs. “I did it!” 

“The kids definitely enjoy center time,” Reese said. “They are in charge of their own learning. Sometimes they just need the autonomy to explore in a different setting.” 

Meeks likes what she’s seeing. 

“She’s following the curriculum so you know these students are on track to learn the things they need to know by the end of the year. And there was a lot of autonomy for the kids — ‘I’ve got a choice about what I want to do,’” Meeks observed. “It’s one thing to be able to count to seven, it’s another to be able to recognize the number seven. And it’s something else to correlate seven to the days of the week. You could see how much fun they were having, but they also were gaining these different levels of understanding.” 

For Meeks, ISP’s work in Hazelwood is personal. She is a Hazelwood resident and represents Hazelwood as president of the Special School District board of education. She also is an alumna of Hazelwood Central High School. She was a smart kid, but a terrible student.

“I would get suspended,” Meeks said. “I was even discouraged from applying to college; I just felt like no one saw me. But there was one teacher. And that made a difference.” 

After college, Meeks signed up for Teach for America and was placed in a struggling school in Kansas City. 

“I say this is God’s blessing, but during that first month, I essentially was a teacher’s assistant, moving from class to class. During that time, I got to see the good, the bad and the indifferent,” Meeks recalled. “When I saw excellence, I would take notes and, to some degree, mimic that excellence.” 

Meeks went on to work as a pre-K and elementary school teacher before serving in leadership roles in the Special School District and at South City Preparatory Academy. She joined ISP in 2022, expanding Math314’s reach to Ritenour, Kirkwood, St. Charles and other school districts. She is excited to expand ISP’s relationship with Hazelwood’s 19 elementary schools and three special education centers.

“With Hazelwood and Dr. Ray, I have this opportunity to make meaningful change in a place that matters to me,” Meeks said. “We couldn’t be more aligned in mission to make sure every pre-K student hits the ground running.”

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Scientists assumed that one specific immune cell subtype was required for mRNA vaccination to activate the immune system. But researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis show in a new study in mice that even without these cells, the mRNA vaccine still triggers strong cancer‑killing responses. That’s because, they found, a cousin to this subtype of immune cell can also stimulate anti-tumor immune activity — an unexpected finding given that this related subtype is not involved in responses to other vaccines.

The findings are published April 15 in Nature, offering a deeper understanding of how the immune system responds to mRNA vaccination and guiding the optimal design of a cancer vaccine.

“There is a lot of interest in applying the mRNA vaccine approaches used during the COVID-19 pandemic to the problem of inducing anti-tumor immunity,” said senior author Kenneth M. Murphy, MD, PhD, the Eugene Opie Centennial Professor of Pathology & Immunology at WashU Medicine. “By dissecting which immune cells are involved and how they coordinate the response, we’re offering vaccine developers some additional mechanistic insights to consider in their goal of optimizing these vaccines against tumor proteins.”

Murphy also is a research member at Siteman Cancer Center, based at Barnes-Jewish Hospital and WashU Medicine.

Unconventional immune pathway

mRNA vaccines work by delivering instructions, in the form of messenger RNA biomolecules, for immune cells to produce bits of protein that trigger the immune system to destroy cells bearing these proteins. So-called dendritic cells produce the protein bits from the mRNA instructions, and T cells — another immune cell — are the ones that seek and destroy. mRNA vaccines can be designed to generate protein bits unique to a tumor so that T cells eliminate those cancerous cells.

cDC1, a classical type 1 dendritic cell, has long been known to be an effective teacher, priming T cells to attack cells infected by a virus. But less is known about how T cells become activated after an mRNA vaccine, whether against a virus or a tumor. In collaboration with the study’s co-corresponding author William E. Gillanders, MD, the Mary Culver Professor of Surgery at WashU Medicine, Murphy and members of his lab used mouse models that lacked cDC1 or a related cell subtype known as cDC2 to tease out the role that different groups of dendritic cells play in priming T cells after mRNA cancer vaccination.

Gillanders, a physician-scientist and surgical oncologist who also has developed an investigational vaccine against triple-negative breast cancer, treats patients at Siteman Cancer Center.

As part of the research, the scientists found that mice immunized with an mRNA vaccine generated strong T-cell responses even in the absence of cDC1s. In addition, they found that immunized mice without cDC1s were able to clear sarcoma tumors — cancers that develop in connective tissues such as fat, muscle, nerves, blood vessels, bone and cartilage. This indicated that some other cell type must be stimulating the T-cell response.

Indeed, their study found that cDC2s also participate in generating an immune response from T cells and preventing tumor growth. The study also found that T cells turned on by cDC1s and cDC2s each showed slightly different molecular “fingerprints.” These differences could help scientists design better versions of vaccines in the future.

Similarly, immunized mice lacking cDC2s and mice that had both cell subtypes produced an immune response and rejected tumor growth, demonstrating that mRNA vaccination uses both dendritic cell subtypes to stop cancer.

Further investigation of cDC2s suggested they activate T cells through an outsourcing process that relies on other cells to use the mRNA instructions to make the protein, chop it up and present small fragments on its surface. Once the protein is processed and presented, those cells then transfer the membrane complex that holds the fragment in place on the cell’s surface to the cDC2 to engage with the T cells — through an already-known process referred to as “cross dressing.”

“This work uncovers a new way mRNA vaccines engage the immune system — through both cDC1 and cDC2 — which helps explain their power and gives researchers concrete targets for making future mRNA cancer vaccines more effective,” said Gillanders. “It could improve vaccine formulation and dosing, potentially explain why some patients respond better to vaccines than others and guide strategies for making vaccines more effective.”

Jo S, Li L, Thakur C, Telfer KA, Sultan H, Ohara RA, He M, Nam G, Chen J, Ou F, Draghi M, Valiante N, Schreiber RD, Randolph GJ, Saligrama N, Murphy TL, Gillanders WE, Murphy KM. mRNA vaccines engage unconventional pathways in CD8+ T cell priming. Nature. April 15, 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41586-026-10353-6

This work was supported by the National Institute of Health (NIH), grant numbers R01AI150297, R01CA248919, R01AI162643, R21AI163421, R01CA240983; the Washington University’s Pancreatic Cancer SPORE, grant number P50CA196510-05; a sponsored research agreement with Innovac Therapeutics. The research involves using the NIH Tetramer Core Facility under contract number 75N93020D00005, which is partially supported by NCI Cancer Center Support Grant (grant number P30 CA91842) to the Siteman Cancer Center from the National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), a component of the NIH, and NIH Roadmap for Medical Research. This content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official view of NCRR or NIH.

Competing interests: Valiante N holds stock in Glyde Bio and Innovac Therapeutics. Randolph GJ reports a patent pending (PCT/US2025/038758) and an associated product licensed to Leinco Technologies. Schreiber RD is a co-founder, scientific advisory board member and stockholder of Asher Biotherapeutics, and a scientific advisory board member of A2 Biotherapeutics, BioLegend (Revvity) and Neuvogen. Work in the Schreiber laboratory was supported by research grants from the National Cancer Institute and the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy. The other authors declare no competing interests.

About WashU Medicine

WashU Medicine is a global leader in academic medicine, including biomedical research, patient care and educational programs with more than 3,000 faculty. Its National Institutes of Health (NIH) research funding portfolio is the second largest among U.S. medical schools and has grown 83% since 2016. Together with institutional investment, WashU Medicine commits well over $1 billion annually to basic and clinical research innovation and training. Its faculty practice is consistently among the top five in the country, with more than 2,000 faculty physicians practicing at 130 locations. WashU Medicine physicians exclusively staff Barnes-Jewish and St. Louis Children’s hospitals — the academic hospitals of BJC HealthCare — and Siteman Cancer Center, a partnership between BJC HealthCare and WashU Medicine and the only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center in Missouri. WashU Medicine physicians also treat patients at BJC’s community hospitals in our region. With a storied history in MD/PhD training, WashU Medicine recently dedicated $100 million to scholarships and curriculum renewal for its medical students, and is home to top-notch training programs in every medical subspecialty as well as physical therapy, occupational therapy, and audiology and communications sciences.

Originally published on the WashU Medicine website

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The gift creates an endowed fund to assist participating students with financial need, including providing resources for tuition and program fees, as well as for airfare, meals and other expenses. The couple also made an additional gift of $60,000 to bolster the summer 2026 iteration.

“Shakespeare was perhaps the greatest humanist of all time,” said Malin, a founder and producing executive director of The Chesapeake Shakespeare Company, Maryland’s leading proponent of classic theater. “If you’re interested in understanding humanity, if you’re interested in becoming an empathetic person, there is no better way than to step into the shoes of the vast array of characters that Shakespeare created.”

The program will be renamed the Schvey-Spottiswoode Shakespeare’s Globe Program. The naming honors Henry Schvey, a professor emeritus and former chair of the PAD; and Patrick Spottiswoode, founder and retired director of Globe Education at Shakespeare’s Globe and a former visiting professor at WashU. Together, they founded the first-of-its-kind study-abroad opportunity in the early 1990s — even as the modern Globe building was still under construction.

“Lesley and Scott are great believers in the liberal arts,” said Julia Walker, chair of the PAD and a professor of English in Arts & Sciences. “They deeply value the role of the arts and humanities in undergraduate education. They understand that theater, at its most basic level, is about the diversity and complexity of the human experience. We are immensely grateful for this generous gift that will provide permanent support for students eager to engage with Shakespeare’s works.”

Helm, who earned a bachelor’s in 1987 from Olin Business School, chairs the retail electricity and power generation company Vistra Corp. He said that as students, both he and Malin were powerfully influenced by their own study-abroad experiences.

“It was really transformational,” Helm said. “I came back with a much greater level of self-confidence and understanding. So this was an opportunity not only to support Shakespeare, about which Lesley is so passionate, but to combine that support with a meaningful study-abroad program for WashU students.”

From Edison to the Globe

Malin and Helm met at WashU in the mid-1980s. “Scott was in the business school,” Malin said. “I was in English and performing arts. So we both stayed true to the paths we forged in college.”

Malin graduated from Arts & Sciences in 1988, delivering the undergraduate address. She and Helm married that fall. Their child, Addison Malin Helm, graduated from WashU Olin in 2022.

Schvey joined the WashU faculty in 1987. Though Malin never took a class with him, Schvey directed her as Hester Solomon in a campus production of Peter Shaffer’s “Equus.” That production turned out to be the first domino in a series of events that would culminate in the founding of WashU’s Shakespeare summer program.

Schvey had invited Shaffer to attend the show’s opening and deliver a lecture. Also attending was Sir Oliver Wright, a former British ambassador to the U.S. and an admirer of Shaffer’s work. Wright was so impressed by the show that he introduced Schvey to actor and director Sam Wanamaker, then leading the campaign to rebuild the Globe, and to Spottiswoode, who was soon to launch the Globe Education program.

In December 1989, Schvey flew to London, toured the Globe’s historic site and met with Wanamaker and Spottiswoode. The three reached an agreement and WashU became the first American university to establish an annual summer program with Globe Education — eight years before Queen Elizabeth officially opened the building.

“People who see the Globe today assume that completion was inevitable,” Schvey said. “But in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it was anything but. It was hard to raise the money. Sam was obliged to build in increments. For several years, the theater stood as an oddly incomplete fragment on the South Bank — a series of bays that eventually formed the Globe’s familiar, circular structure.”

Accessible and exciting

The original Globe opened in 1599, on the south bank of the River Thames. It was constructed by the Lord Chamberlain’s Men, Shakespeare’s own company, and saw productions of “As You Like It,” “Hamlet,” “Othello” and many others. But in 1613, a fire broke out during a performance of “Henry VIII,” and the structure was lost. The second Globe opened the following year but staged its last performance in 1642 and was pulled down in 1644.

Three centuries later, when Wanamaker began planning the third iteration, the only indication of the site’s illustrious history was a small plaque at a neighboring brewery.

For the first few summers, Schvey and students studied and performed in an old coffee factory, but students also were immersed in London’s rich theatrical culture.

In 1993, the late Tony Award-winning actress Jane Lapotaire, a Royal Shakespeare Company veteran, joined the WashU summer faculty. Spottiswoode, conversely, became a regular visitor to the Danforth Campus — delivering lectures, advising on productions and once serving as a visiting associate professor.

“I was astonished not only by Patrick’s love of Shakespeare, but by his genius for making Shakespeare come alive for young people,” Schvey recalled. “He had a gift. He made the plays feel real, accessible and exciting.”

The right time

“Since its founding, WashU’s Shakespeare summer program has been enormously successful, both pedagogically and in terms of the student experience,” Walker said. But it also faced challenges, she explained. Applications for financial aid rose sharply in the years following the Great Recession of 2007-08 and again following the COVID-19 pandemic.

In 2023, the Shakespeare summer program regained momentum when it became linked to WashU’s Ampersand Programs, a series of interdisciplinary and experiential opportunities for first-year students. Those who completed “All the World’s a Stage,” a two-semester exploration of Shakespeare’s language, historical context and performance practices, could then apply to study at the Globe. But participation costs remained a concern. The Globe program was paused for summer 2025 and, absent additional funding, looked like it might be paused again in 2026.

When Malin spotted that news, in Walker’s annual letter to PAD alumni, she knew she had to act. “Scott and I thought, ‘we can make a gift,’” Malin remembered. In a matter of weeks, “the program was saved. That was exciting.

“I would have loved to have done this program as an undergraduate,” Malin added. “Spending weeks concentrating on nothing but Shakespeare in performance — it’s any actor’s dream. And the Globe is just such a remarkable space. It changes how the plays are perceived.”

The program carries additional significance because of the couple’s lifelong relationships with its founders. Malin has remained in touch with Schvey. She also met and worked with Spottiswoode through the Shakespeare Theatre Association, of which both the Globe and Malin’s company are members. (Spottiswoode stepped down as Globe Education director in 2020.)

Endowing the Schvey-Spottiswoode program “fits so squarely with Lesley’s life’s work,” Helm said. “It’s an important contribution to her field.

“The goal is to make sure that everyone, whether they’re a first-generation college student or come from a family with means, has the same opportunity,” Helm concluded. “We want any WashU student who sees the value and wants to attend to be able to make it work.”

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