A pivotal Oregon State chemistry project – funded by a $493K grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust – will create a distinctive collaboration center for academic and industrial researchers that will bring synthetic chemistry into the digital age.
As a member of the Yakama Nation, Microbiology Ph.D. student Corbin Schuster is interested in the study of human diseases that have a higher incidence among Native peoples, such as toxoplasmosis (a parasitic infection), as well as diseases of salmon, which are central to the food, culture and religion of the Yakama people. He is thankful to not have to separate his culture from his career.
The College of Science awarded two interdisciplinary teams funding to pursue promising leads in mental health and cancer research. One team will investigate the role of the gut-brain axis on sex differences in anxiety, and another will explore ways to develop an synthetic version of HHT-- a rare plant alkaloid that is showing great promise in the development of new medicines for multiple forms of cancer.
Team-based Rapid Assessment of Community-Level Coronavirus Epidemics, or TRACE-COVID-19, was launched by OSU in April 2020 with door-to-door sampling in Corvallis and expanded to other cities around the state while also adding a wastewater testing component. In December, OSU received a $2 million grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to create a national TRACE Center that will expand the OSU’s COVID-19 public health project to other states.
College of Science faculty were awarded $15.82 million in new research grants and awards in fiscal year 2020. Two months into the new fiscal year, the College is seeing strong momentum with significant awards totaling more than $3.48 million already.
Biochemists at OSU have received a grant from the National Science Foundation to pursue research on the SARS-CoV-2, the novel coronavirus that causes Covid-19.
Integrative Biology Professor Sally Hacker is one of five Oregon Sea Grant omnibus funding recipients. She will study a new hybrid super beachgrass along coastal dunes in the Pacific Northwest.
How are devastating plant diseases spread? Is there a better way to predict HIV prevalence in a city? How can we detect toxic algae blooms before they occur? And which of the thousands of metal-organic frameworks can be used for storing and separating gases, like CO2 from industrial plants? Four faculty members received College of Science Research and Innovation Seed (SciRIS-ii) awards this February to pursue answers to these questions over the course of the next year.
