In honor of longtime Opera Theatre music director Stephen Lord (pictured above), OTSL board member Patricia Hecker has made a $750,000 gift to create a new endowment fund, the Stephen H. Lord Fund for Music. Lord, who will become music director emeritus in 2017, has been with Opera Theatre for nearly 25 years. He was named one of the 25 Most Powerful Names in U.S. Opera in 2006 by Opera News magazine, making him one of only four conductors on the list.

Insider-Jill-Brouwer-PowellKudos to Dr. Jill Brouwer, who recently received the Carolyn Heiman Lichtenberg Crest Award from Pi Beta Phi. Brouwer, a SLU ob/gyn, is dedicated to women’s health and finding solutions for women’s issues like domestic and sexual violence.

Insider-Malone-at-posterTwo local budding scientists will advance to compete at the Intel International Science & Engineering Fair in May. Twelfth-grader Monica Malone of Ladue Horton Watkins High School (pictured) and 10th-grader Haran Kumar of Parkway West won first and second place, respectively, at the recent Academy of Science-St. Louis Fair Honors Division. Malone’s project was a study of microbial communities from till and no-till Missouri soils using genetic fingerprinting; Kumar’s was about multidimensional graph-based path finding.Insider-WU-MD-item

Dr. Ramaswamy Govindan of W.U. School of Medicine has been named the Anheuser-Busch Endowed Chair in Medical Oncology. Govindan is being recognized for innovative research, including using field genomics to develop better lung cancer therapies and improve patient outcomes. Pictured: Dr. Ramaswamy Govindan, right, with Dr. David Perlmutter, Dr. Victoria Fraser and Dr. John DiPersio

insider-coverCongratulations to Nurses for Newborns on 25 years of helping local babies! The nonprofit is hosting its annual A Night For Newborns Dinner Auction April 17 at Hilton St. Louis Frontenac. Proceeds will help the group continue to provide nurse visits and infant necessities to the most at-risk families in our region. Tickets are $150 and can be ordered at nursesfornewborns.org.