Words from the Dean
April 2021
Dear colleagues,
I am proud of the College of Science community. In a year of great difficulty, our incredible faculty, administrators and staff rose to the challenge and brought a virtual Science education to life and made new breakthroughs in critically important areas of science.
This month, we have several opportunities to gather as a community and acknowledge the extraordinary contributions of members in our community. We also have opportunities to examine together ways we can grow and become a College that is more inclusive, equitable and just.
Please join me at these virtual College of Science events to celebrate our accomplishments and focus on future directions. You can read event details in this newsletter, but I’d like to emphasize their significance here.
It’s no secret that we have exceptional faculty in the College of Science. And one of our most prestigious faculty honors is receiving the F.A. Gilfillan Memorial Award, which honors a faculty member who demonstrates a long and exceptional scientific career with nationally and globally recognized scholarly achievements. The 2019 Gilfillan award went to Professor of Integrative Biology Michael Blouin, a pioneering researcher in evolutionary genetics and parasitology.
Originally scheduled in spring 2020, the lecture was postponed until this year. Next Thursday, April 8, Dr. Blouin will present the 2021 Gilfillan Memorial Lecture in a virtual format. He will address “What Darwin couldn’t imagine: A personal journey through the ever-changing field of evolutionary genetics.” I look forward to hearing how he has employed cutting-edge molecular and genomic tools to answer previously unapproachable questions in evolution and genetics, and how technological innovation and chance encounters influenced his career path.
On Thursday, April 22, we will celebrate individuals who go above and beyond in the College’s 2020-21 Combined Awards Ceremony – a combination of our annual Faculty and Staff Awards and Teaching and Advising Awards celebrations. Please sign up for this virtual event and honor your outstanding colleagues in research, administrative excellence, exceptional teaching, advising and mentorship. Read more about the awards, including a list of previous winners.
Our alumni are also a continuing source of pride for us. Physics alumna Briony Horgan (B.S. ’05) will be a speaker at the Physics Colloquium next Monday, April 5. Dr. Horgan, an associate professor of planetary sciences at Purdue University, played a key role in determining the location for the NASA Perseverance rover landing on Mars. Request a Zoom link if you would like to attend.
Finally, please join me in attending a lecture with Dr. Ibram X. Kendi on Wednesday, April 14. This Provost’s Lecture Series talk is co-sponsored by the College of Science. Dr. Kendi is one of the nation’s leading scholars of anti-racism and a three-time NY Times best-selling author. As I am sure you are aware, his ideas are very influential right now. I am not certain of the format yet, but if he takes questions, I hope that science faculty, staff and students will take the opportunity to probe those ideas.
I also encourage you to consider attending virtual events next week that are part of the OSU Holocaust Memorial Week, including a talk by author Marion Blumenthal Lazan, a Holocaust survivor who spent nearly four years of her childhood in concentration camps.
I am looking forward to these opportunities to bring the community together. Thank you for your role in moving the College of Science forward.
Roy Haggerty
Dean, College of Science
All the news that’s fit to print.
Please submit news, honors and awards, discoveries, events, research funding, student news, alumni updates and more. Just send us a quick email by the end of the month.
Research updates
Research Funding
A team led by chemist Douglas Keszler won $493K grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust. The three-year grant enables the launch of the Oregon State Continuous Flow Facility to bring synthetic chemistry into the digital age.
Chemist David Ji received a $390K grant from the National Science Foundation for his project entitled “Collaborative Research: Elucidating Correlations Between Solvation Structure and Electrochemical Behavior of Water-in-Salt Electrolytes for Highly Reversible Zinc Metal Anode.”
Research Proposal Support
You can find funding opportunities on ECOS. To access a suite of tools and resources available to faculty, visit the College of Science Proposal Support webpage.
Congratulations
Jane Lubchenco has long emphasized the role of the ocean in climate change. Oceans absorb a quarter of human-emitted carbon dioxide and 93% of greenhouse-related heat, with consequences to its ecosystems. (Image courtesy of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center).
National Honors
Chemist Marilyn Mackiewicz received a 2021 National Science Foundation CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation. The $558K grant is for a project entitled “CAREER: Training Diverse Scientists to Design Bionanomaterials for Imaging and Labeling of Therapeutic Stem cells,” which aims to address fundamental questions essential to the advancement of nanomaterials as preclinical research tools. This CAREER award integrates Mackiewicz’s passion for research, education and mentoring and constitutes the basis for her long-term career goal to increase the representation of diverse people solving global health challenges with nanotechnology. Fantastic!
University and College Honors
Congratulations to Kimberly Halsey, associate professor of microbiology, who has been appointed as the inaugural Excellence in Microbiology Faculty Scholar. With this new endowed position, Halsey will advance excellence in her teaching and marine carbon cycle research and teaching at Oregon State through November 2026.
Visibility
Tetrahedral and squareDance Your Ph.D. winner and biochemistry Ph.D. candidate Heather Masson-Forsythe (left) with her wife and videographer, Margaux.planar models of OgTs4, a molecule that could exist if Tennessine and Oganesson were able to react with one another.
Biochemistry Ph.D. student Heather Masson-Forsythe’s Dance Your Ph.D. win was featured in NPR and Forbes magazine.
The history and impact of the TRACE project were featured in the Corvallis Gazette Times on March 29. While the beginnings of the program were humble compared to what it has become today, it was among the first such programs in the nation and a major step in formulating a science-based public health response to the pandemic.
Chemist Mas Subramanian was interviewed by The Big Picture Science podcast produced by the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute about his YInMnBlue discovery in its feature on color.
Physicist KC Walsh wrote a two-part article for eCampusNews.com featuring the Physics Department’s pioneering role in making virtual learning more commonplace by creating its first online introductory physics sequence.
College News
An octopus and an aquarist interact at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. Photo courtesy of the Oregon Sea Grant.
Following the devastating shooting in Atlanta that targeted people of Asian descent, Dean of the College of Science Roy Haggerty published a statement expressing the College’s strong and unwavering support of our Asian faculty, students and staff. We affirm our value of diversity and everyone’s right to a safe and healthy university.
The sixth round of TRACE-COVID-19 sampling in Corvallis took place in mid-March. Even with more people being vaccinated, it’s not time to stop being careful or to stop monitoring community prevalence of the virus, TRACE leaders say.
Meghan Holst, a 2014 marine biology alumna and a biologist at the Aquarium of the Bay in San Francisco developed a specific decision tool for caretakers of the giant Pacific octopus, adapting a tool developed by the European Union for observing cephalopod welfare. The findings were published in September 2020 in the Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science.
Enjoy this light-hearted video with a spring break science theme created by our talented new design intern Al Harith who recently joined the COS marketing team.
Events
Upcoming
Physics Colloquium featuring Associate Professor of Planetary Sciences Briony Horgan
Monday, April 5, 4 – 5 p.m.
Oregon State physics alumna Briony Horgan (B.S. ’05) will be a speaker at the Physics Colloquium. Horgan, an associate professor of planetary sciences at Purdue University, is a member of the Perseverance team since 2014, and she led mineralogy studies to pinpoint the Jezero Crater as the best landing site on the Red Planet. Request the Zoom link.
Gilfillan lecture by Michael Blouin (remote)
April 8, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.
Join us for the 2021 F.A. Gilfillan Lecture featuring Michael Blouin. His lecture, entitled “What Darwin couldn’t imagine: A personal journey through the ever-changing field of evolutionary genetics” will address how research findings in evolutionary genetics can be translated and applied to practical questions in fields from conservation biology to human health.
Provost’s Lecture featuring Ibram X. Kendi (remote)
April 14, 5 – 6 p.m.
The Provost’s Lecture Series at OSU presents An Evening with Ibram X. Kendi, in Conversation About How to be an Anti-Racist. Acclaimed author of New York Times bestseller How to Be An Anti-Racist, Kendi’s newest book is an edited collection, Four Hundred Souls: A Community History of African America, 1619-2019. Kendi is Andrew Mellon Professor in the Humanities at Boston University and the founding director of the BU Center for Antiracist Research. Ibram Kendi’s talk is co-sponsored by the College of Science. The event is free and open to the public. Register here.
College of Science 20-21 Combined Awards Ceremony (remote)
April 22, 4:30 – 6 p.m.
Join us to celebrate your colleagues at a combined College of Science awards ceremony celebrating excellence in teaching, advising, mentorship, research and administrative excellence. Family and friends are welcome to join this remote event to help celebrate our nominees and awards winners. Learn more about the College of Science awards. RSVP by April 15.
Recent events
International Women’s Day Panel
The College of Science hosted an online panel of alumni and faculty who are at the frontlines in the battle against COVID-19. Panelists included Biochemistry & Biophysics Head Elisar Barbar, Assistant Professor of statistics Katie McLaughlin, and alumni Elizanette Lopez (Microbiology, M.S. ’20), ORISE fellow, Centers for Disease Control, and Carrie Manore (Mathematics, Ph.D. ’11), staff scientist, Los Alamos National Laboratory. Associate Dean of the College Vrushali Bokil organized the event.
March 18
Alumni Megan Cook (Biology, Chemistry ’09), a leading expert on ocean education and marine science communication at the Ocean Exploratory Trust, and Jeremy Hoffman (Geology, Ph.D.), chief scientist at the Science Museum of Virginia hosted a webinar entitled “Careers in Science Communication and Storytelling.”