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Headshot of Vaishnavi Padaki
Graduate students

10 Questions With... Vaishnavi Padaki, microbiology Ph.D. candidate

10 Questions With… Vaishnavi Padaki, fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in microbiology, who will be defending her thesis in April. Padaki has created mixed-media artwork for part of her thesis which is on display March 31-April 16 in the Strand Gallery in Strand Ag Hall on the Corvallis campus.

With green bushes behind her, Natalie Donato smiles as she reveals her blue "Vibrant Ocean" license plate.
Students

Award-winning biology student modernizes shark research using digital art techniques

Natalie Donato, a third-year honors biology student, is submerged in the thrilling world of sharks. On a typical day at Oregon State University, this ambitious junior can be found creating 3D models of shark heads in a research lab and recently designed Oregon’s new shark license plate.

A man in a white button-up gestures to molecular art on a table, explaining it to onlooking students.
Teaching Innovation

Students bake, sculpt and stitch molecular structures to life in Protein Portraits colloquium

Taught by biochemistry and biophysics professor Phil McFadden, the Honors colloquium course Protein Portraits offers a uniquely artistic perspective on biomolecules.

AJ Damiana and Alysia Vrailas-Mortimer pose next to Damiana's yellow, green, red, and blue painting, split between two frames.
Students

How painting cellular aging made this biochemistry student a better scientist

Honors biochemistry and molecular biology student AJ Damiana recently finished a year-long fellowship through the new PRAx Center. Her experience culminated in a piece of art depicting the hallmarks of cellular aging. She was also honored to accept the assistant editorship at Beaver’s Digest at the same time.

A photo of a building.
Faculty and Staff

Science faculty awarded L.L. Stewart Faculty Fellowships to bridge science and art

Two College of Science professors have been awarded the 2024 L.L. Stewart Faculty Fellowship.

AJ Damiana wears a striped button-up with a smile, her dark, curly hair falling to her shoulders.
Students

Biochemistry PRAx fellow conveys science through art

To take science from a nebulous image to an understandable craft, honors biochemistry major AJ Damiana turns to art. Now a Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts fellow, her ambitions have never been closer to reach.

An floral and wasp fossil lay next to each other in amber
OSU Press Releases

Entombed together: Rare fossil flower and parasitic wasp make for amber artwork

Biologist's fossil research has revealed an exquisite merger of art and science: a long-stemmed flower of a newly described plant species encased in a 30-million-year-old tomb together with a parasitic wasp.

photo of Andrea Burton in front of green background
Graduate students

Ph.D. graduate and conservation biologist empowers students as scientists

Since childhood, recent Ph.D. grad Andrea Burton knew she loved animals and nature and was confident that a career in biology was in her future. Now, she is a published scholar who strives to make a difference for both students and marine wildlife.

Artwork, a piece of glass with screen printing of a DNA sequence inside of it.
Microbiology

Microbiologist Jerri Bartholomew elevates microbes to fine art

Bartholomew’s glasswork that fuses artistry with research is on exhibition in The Little Gallery in Kidder Hall from March 7 to April 8, 2022. A new fellowship invites scientist-artists to explore interdisciplinary projects.

Heather Masson-Forsythe with her sister, Margaux, at a waterfall
Graduate students

Dancing through genres, biochemistry/biophysics student wins Science Magazine’s Dance Your Ph.D. contest

Heather Masson-Forsythe, a fifth-year graduate student in the College of Science, is a winner in the 13th annual Dance Your Ph.D. contest organized by Science Magazine in the newly created COVID-19 category. "I think the arts in general are really, really valuable on their own but also to communicate science, and as someone who really loves dance, I think it’s one of the best ways to communicate," she said.

Science-themed novels lined up in an angled grid
Students

Microbiology student featured on Science Friday

Microbiology major Sarah Olson Michel shares summer science book recommendations on Ira Flatow's Science Friday show.

Megan Tucker standing in park
Students

Mathematics and writing senior awarded Department of Energy fellowship

Megan Tucker will graduate next month with a substantial amount of research experience under her belt: She was awarded the Mickey Leland Energy Fellowship, which gave her the opportunity to work on an interdisciplinary team at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Albany, Oregon, during the summer of 2019. The new knowledge gained from her internship helped her land a job as a technical writer with Amazon Web Services — a subsidiary of Amazon that provides on-demand cloud computing platforms to individuals, companies and governments.