Words from the Dean
November 2023

Dear colleagues,

I am thrilled to finally arrive on campus this week to join your Science community as incoming dean. Thank you for giving me this opportunity to work alongside you as we collaborate to extend the College’s reach and impact.

My first order of business is to express my gratitude to Vrushali Bokil for her outstanding leadership as interim dean over the past year. She has steered the College forward in implementing the new strategic plan, and in recruiting and hiring new leaders, researchers and educators. She also guided the College through a new budgetary system and worked through countless challenges with wisdom and grace. And her careful attention to equity and justice issues in every one of those actions is an incredible example for all of us. I feel fortunate that she remains a key leader in our College as the associate dean of research and graduate studies.

I am eager to get to work as your dean and will be tackling some of the urgent challenges that you have already presented me with right away. But I will also be taking time to meet and talk with as many faculty, staff, and students as possible so that I can understand your collective and personal aspirations and look for places where I can best help guide the College forward. My overall goal is to nurture a warm and collaborative culture where every one of us has the support and the tools we need to excel at what excites us. 

I look forward to seeing you at the Meet-and-Greet today.

Eleanor Feingold
Dean, College of Science

Research Highlights

Adrian Gombart is part of a research group that discovered, in a mouse model and lab cultures, that a compound derived from hops reduces the abundance of a gut bacterium associated with metabolic syndrome. An estimated 35 percent of the U.S. adult population suffers from the syndrome. Their work was published in the journal Microbiome.

Research by microbiologist Jerri Bartholomew and her colleagues conveyed that the world’s largest dam removal and restoration project currently underway on the Klamath River will aid salmon populations, however, it will not fully alleviate challenges faced by the species. Bartholomew worked with the scientists at Hoopa, the Yurok Tribe, the Klamath and Karuk Tribes, Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration.

HP shared an article highlighting their brand-new piece of technology used in Claudia Maier’s biomolecular Mass Spectrometry Center. The HP D100 Single Cell Dispenser can isolate living cells from specimens so scientists can study which proteins are implicated in aging, dementia and certain cancers.

A study directed by biochemist Juan Vanegas reveals new insight into the effect of physical stimuli on the structural properties of the AT1 receptor. Vanegas and his team used Expanse at the San Diego Supercomputer Center at UC San Diego and Anton 2 at the Pittsburgh Supercomputer Center to conduct their research.

Microbiologist Allison N. Evans worked on a collaborative team with U.S. Geological Survey researchers to understand Vitamin B1, also known as thiamine, deficiency in wild animal populations. Their work is vital in preventing catastrophic population crashes and helping conservation efforts! Watch this video to learn more about their discovery regarding the source of thiamine deficiency.

Research Funding

Ryan Mehl received $234,000 from the NobleReach Foundation in partnership with the National Science Foundation. The partnership seeks to identify and accelerate the translation of NSF-funded research into biotechnologies and bio-inspired designs with commercial and societal impacts. Learn more about GCE4All’s work to unleash the potential of genetic code expansion for biomedical research.

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.

National Honors

Physicist David Craig was elected as a Fellow of the American Physical Society. Congratulations! This honor was created to recognize members who have made advances in physics through original research and publication, or made significant innovative contributions in the application of physics to science and technology. Craig’s research interests include the foundations of quantum mechanics, quantum gravity and quantum cosmology.

Physics student Rand Burnette was featured as an Advancing Science in America Oregon Chapter scholar. Burnette’s research is a deep dive into the vast realms of large-scale physics, including cosmology, dark matter, dark energy and general relativity. Fantastic!

Congratulations to mathematics graduate student Praveeni Mathangadeera who received a poster prize at the October 13-15 Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Pacific Northwest section meeting in Bellingham, WA.

Alumni Naren Vohra’s presentation at the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics Conference on Computational Science and Engineering resulted in an invitation from SIAM to publish an article for SIAM News online. We are so proud of this accomplishment! Vohra recently defended his Ph.D. and started his postdoc position at Los Alamos National Lab.

From left: David Craig, Rand Burnette, Praveeni Mathangadeera and Sarah Louie

College Honors

Biochemistry and Biophysics Ph.D. student Sarah Louie earned the 2023-24 Matthews Graduate Fellowship. “Sarah stood out amongst all their peers. They are an extremely hard worker in the lab, and very determined to get the results that they were looking for,” Professor Rick Cooley, Louie’s research advisor, said.

CEOAS poster winner Celeste Goth credits her mentor, microbiology graduate Nilanjana Das for her support and guidance. Goth presented her poster, “Distribution of the salmonid parasite Tetracapsuloides bryosalmonae in the McKenzie River” at the CAS Career Fair and Student Showcase on Thursday, Oct. 26.

Welcome

Eleanor Feingold joins the College of Science with almost two decades of leadership experience and a commitment to advancing science for the well-being of all. Her people-centered leadership approach and dedication to social justice aligns with the university’s vision of shared prosperity. Read about her vision to extend the reach of science towards a more inclusive and equitable future, and please join us tomorrow for welcome event with Q&A session, hors d’oeuvres and COS swag tomorrow, November 7! (Details below.)

Promotion and Tenure

The College of Science Promotion and Tenure committee has been finalized. The Chair of the committee in 2023-24 will be Bob Mason, the committees longest serving full professor. The 2023-2024 College of Science P&T Committee membership is:

• Robert Mason
• Rebecca Vega Thurber
• Devon Quick
• Virginia Weis
• KC Walsh
• Ethan Minot
• Michael Freitag
• Lisa Madsen
• Chong Fang
• Holly Swisher
• Oksana Ostroverkhova

Highlighting Marine Biology

The College of Science launched a new video highlighting Oregon State’s marine biology degree option. The video showcases the Hatfield Marine Science Center, where students have access to hands-on research, state-of-the-art facilities, outstanding faculty and industry contacts.

Inclusive Excellence @ OSU

Read about how the College Science is breaking down barriers in STEM education through Inclusive Excellence @ OSU. The program’s innovative approach, supported by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Inclusive Excellence Initiative, is working to shift STEM pedagogy, making it more inclusive and accessible to all students. Learn how this program enhances STEM education in Oregon.

Science attends PICES

College of Science graduate students and faculty attended the North Pacific Marine Science Organization’s annual meeting in Seattle, Washington in October. Priorities for PICES within the decade focus on climate change, fisheries and ecosystem-based management, social, ecological and environmental dynamics of marine systems, coastal communities, traditional ecological knowledge and human dimensions.

Upcoming Events

Meet-and-Greet with Dean Eleanor Feingold
Tuesday, November 7, 4-5 p.m. in Kidder Hall, Room 350
Reception following in the Dean’s Office

We hope you will join us in Kidder 350 to hear Dean Feingold share her vision and goals for her leadership role in the College of Science during a Q&A. Please stay afterward for a reception where we’ll enjoy hors d’oeuvres, refreshments and COS swag. RSVP now!

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Northwest Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium
Saturday, November 11, 12:30-4:30 p.m., Online

The 15th annual Northwest Undergraduate Mathematics Symposium will be held online by Oregon State University. See https://nums.math.oregonstate.edu for details and to register.

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Moving Science Forward meeting
Wednesday, November 29, 4-5:30 p.m., MU Horizon Room

College of Science strategic plan implementation leaders Vrushali Bokil, Jessica Siegel, Virginia Weis and Eleanor Feingold will present a report on Strategic Plan implementation activities over the past year and look forward to year two.

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Inclusive Excellence Lecture
Thursday, February 15, 2024, 5:30-7 p.m., LaSells Stewart Center

Kristen Grorud-Colvert will present the College’s annual Inclusive Excellence Lecture. In her nine years at Oregon State, she has demonstrated valuable leadership in fostering a culture of inclusion in the College of Science. In 2020-21 Grorud-Colvert led a department-wide effort to develop an Equity, Justice and Inclusion Community Values statement to guide the department’s future goals and actions. In the summer of 2022, Grorud-Colvert co-organized a Decolonizing Biology workshop.

Recent Events

Yunker Lecture
October 9

The physics department welcomed Gaudenz Danuser, who is appointed at the UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, where he served as the Chair of the Lyda Hill Department of Bioinformatics and the Director of the Cecil H. and Ida Green Center for Systems Biology. Danuser delivered his lecture titled, Cell Shapes Keep Cells in Shape.

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Meet the STEM Employers Networking Night
October 17

College of Science students attended this networking event and explored potential career options. Employers, including Idaho National Laboratory and Micron, spoke with students and provided valuable career advice.

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SACNAS National Diversity in STEM Conference
October 26-28

Oregon State University was the presenting partner for the 2023 National Diversity in STEM Conference, held at the Oregon Convention Center in Portland! SACNAS is an inclusive organization dedicated to fostering the success of Chicanos/Hispanics & Native Americans — from college students to professionals — in attaining advanced degrees, careers and leadership positions within STEM.

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Discovery Days
October 31-November 1

Approximately 1,400 elementary and middle school students from around Oregon joined us at OSU’s CH2M Hill Alumni Center for Discovery Days, an outreach program involving many of the science departments at OSU, as well as departments from Agriculture and Engineering. This two-day event, held in both the Fall and Spring terms, features scientific displays and hands-on activities from different departments that help foster an appreciation and passion for science in younger students.