IMPACT

Actinide chemistry is defined by its cutting-edge research, which graduate student Jenna Bustos has a passion for pursuing. From becoming a member of the Nyman Research Group at Oregon State to interning at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Bustos is well-versed in the field and eager to see what it brings next for her.

This past summer, Ph.D. student Savanah Leidholt set out to create a summer “bootcamp” for area high school students to draw more students from BIPOC, LGBTQ+, low-income and other diverse backgrounds to the study of microbiology.

Three years ago, current Oregon State University Assistant Professor Swati Patel and two colleagues wanted to do something to counter systemic racism and inequities in mathematics. In response, they founded the Math For All conference at Tulane University in New Orleans. Math For All is now a national conference that hosts annual local programs throughout the country. In late February, about 40 people attended the Math For All satellite conference in Corvallis for free.

Students from Oregon State University along with thousands of other attendees from across the nation were welcomed to the National Diversity in STEM (NDiSTEM) Conference Oct. 27, 2022. The event was built to serve as a reminder that culture and science are not mutually exclusive or contradictory. NDiSTEM asserted that science is not a place to shed culture, but a place where it should thrive.

I call on all members of the College of Science to challenge systemic, organizational and individual racism and implicit biases shaping our notion of who can thrive as part of a science community. Through our actions, we express the power of the College of Science to help create a just society.

National Science Foundation CAREER award recipient Marilyn Rampersad Mackiewicz will present the inaugural 2022 College of Science Inclusive Excellence Lecture, “Empowering Cultures of Belonging: Thriving, Innovating and Solving Global Challenges.”

Wanting to spend more time with his partner and one-year-old son, Angulo Barba applied for the Graduate Degrees for Minorities in Engineering and Science (GEM) Fellowship, a national program that promotes the participation of underrepresented groups in post-graduate science and engineering education and the technical workforce.

Only 1.7% of attorneys in Oregon identified as Hispanic or Latino/a in 2020.

College of Science alumni Román Hernández (‘92) is not only part of that 1.7%, but he has dedicated his time to making sure that number grows.

Physics Ph.D. candidate Nima Laal has a poster on his wall of an alien spaceship. The text on the bottom reads “I want to believe.”

To Laal, the poster isn’t referencing creatures from another planet, but instead the search for elusive gravitational waves.

On a sunny June afternoon, 20 high school students from across Oregon stood in a college chemistry laboratory watching a balloon. Their eyes widened as it began to shrink and turn into a wrinkled but rigid ball of rubber. No magic was involved — just liquid nitrogen.

When honors student Sahana Shah ran for the student House of Representatives, she won the election with the most votes of any candidate. One of her main platforms? Helping establish a disability cultural center to better adapt the campus to the needs of neurodiverse students. She is now joining forces with other student groups to bring the idea to life.