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Research and Innovation Seed Program (SciRIS)

Kim Halsey and student in lab.

The College of Science Research and Innovation Seed (SciRIS) Program funds projects based on collaborative research within our community and beyond. The program's awards seed funding for high impact collaborative proposals that build teams, pursue fundamental discoveries and create societal impact.

Founded in 2018, SciRIS accelerates the pace of research, discovery and innovation in the College of Science by enabling scientists to work across an array of disciplines in a mentored environment.

The program provides three tiers of funding for collaborative projects: $10,000, which funds research planning, team formation and initial experiments; $75,000, which supports a research project to develop a proof of concept; and $125,000 to accelerate work toward or commensurate with an external funding opportunity.

SciRIS Stage 1 ($10,000)

Deciphering triple negative breast cancer cell population heterogeneity using single cell mass spectrometry (2024)

  • Claudia Maier, Chemistry
  • Yanming Di, Statistics
  • Xiaoli Fern, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
  • Chad Giusti, Mathematics
  • Siva Kolluri, Environmental and Molecular Toxicology
Read about the 2024 award recipient.

Computational Discovery, Functional Characterization, and Structure Determination of microproteins (miPs) (2023)

  • David Hendrix, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Colin Johnson, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Claudia Maier, Chemistry
  • Patrick Reardon, Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility

Bioinformatics for integrated river health (2023)

  • David Lytle, Integrative Biology
  • Justin Sanders, Microbiology
  • Anna Jolles, Integrative Biology
  • Claire Couch, College of Veterinarian Medicine

Harnesses longitudinal microbiome data to define the ecological roles of host-associated microbes (2022)

  • Yuan Jiang, Statistics
  • Anna Jolles, Integrative Biology
  • Chenyang Duan, Statistics
  • Caroline Glidden, Biology, Stanford University

Oysters, Vibrio and its bacteriophages: A model system for understanding population and coevolutionary host-pathogen-hyperpathogen dynamics (2022)

  • Anna Jolles, Integrative Biology
  • Claudia Hase, Microbiology
  • Hayriye Gulbudak, Mathematics, University of Louisiana (Lafayette)
Read about the 2022 and 2023 award recipients.

Engineering thermal electronic converters using ultralow bandgap semiconductors (2021)

  • Matt Graham, Physics - College of Science Innovation Award

The College of Science Innovation Award (renamed the Industry Partnership Award in 2022) provides resources for projects that take a new direction, utilize a new technology or are in the proof-of-concept phase.

Multi-scale approaches to understand the roles of dynamic protein complexes in biology (2021)

  • Elisar Barbar, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Michael Blouin, Integrative Biology
  • Afua Nyarko, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Maria Franco, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Patrick Reardon, Director of Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility

A tropical reef experimental system at OSU's Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory (2021)

  • Becky Vega Thurber, Microbiology
  • Virginia Weis, Integrative Biology
  • Jerri Bartholomew, Microbiology
  • Ruth Milston-Clements, John L. Fryer Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory
  • Denise Silva, Microbiology

Electron Diffraction Adds a New Dimension to Mass Spectrometry (2021)

  • Wei Kong, Chemistry
  • Lan Xue, Statistics
Read more about 2021 SciRIS awards.

Performance optimization of transistors and solar photovoltaics by ultrabroadband photoconductance microscopy of trap-state density and lifetimes (2020)

  • Matthew Graham, Physics
  • Paul Cheong, Chemistry
Read more.

Biochemical barriers on the path to ocean anoxia (2018)

  • Francis Chan, Integrative Biology
  • Stephen Giovannoni, Microbiology

Identifying new antinociceptive compounds for treating chronic pain and itch using in vivo assays (2018)

  • James Strother, Integrative Biology
  • Sandra Loesgen, Chemistry

Leveraging collaboration to establish the Microbiome Data Science Center (2018)

  • David Koslicki, Mathematics
  • Thomas Sharpton, Microbiology

An integrative investigation of the role of the gut-brain axis on anxiety in female murine models (2018)

  • Maude David, Microbiology
  • Kenton Hokanson, Microbiology
Read more about 2018 SciRIS awards.

Integration of multiple approaches to understand IDPs (2017)

College of Science Impact Award

  • Elisar Barbar, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Afua Nyarko, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Weihong Qiu, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Peter Eschbach, OSU Electron Microscope Facility

The College of Science Impact Awards were a precursor of the SciRIS program, providing $10,000 in philanthropic gifts to an early-stage research or innovation project, with a match from the Oregon State Provost office.

SciRIS Stage 2 ($75,000)

Polariton-controlled spin waves in quantum magnets for the next-generation spintronics (2023)

  • Oksana Ostroverkhova, Physics
  • Axel Saenz Rodriguez, Mathematics
  • Chong Fang, Chemistry
  • Tim Zuehlsdorff, Chemistry
  • Pallavi Dhagat, Electical Engineering and Computer Science
  • Ethan Minot, Physics
  • Matthew Graham, Physics

The hypoxic barrier: Oxygenase enzyme kinetics and ocean health (2022)

  • Stephen Giovannoni, Microbiology
  • Francis Chan, Integrative Biology

Expanding a new toxic harmful algal bloom monitoring strategy to multiple Oregon lakes (2022)

  • Kimberly Halsey, Microbiology
  • James Fox, Microbiology
  • Duo Jiang, Statistics
  • David Donahue, City of Eugene
  • Daniel Sobata, Oregon Department of Water Quality
  • Bradin Hilbrandt, City of Salem
Read more about 2022 SciRIS awards.

An integrative investigation of the role of the gut-brain axis on sex differences in anxiety (2020)

  • Maude David, Microbiology
  • Kenton Hokanson, Microbiology
  • Kathy Magnusson, Carlson College of Veterinary Medicine
Read more.

Structurally Functionalized Nanobodies (2019)

  • Ryan Mehl, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Richard Cooley, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Weihong Qiu, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Chris Cebra, College of Veterinary Medicine
  • Shay Bracha, College of Veterinary Medicine

Homoharringtonine: Chemical synthesis and evaluation of designed analogs (2019)

  • Christopher Beaudry, Chemistry
  • Victor Hsu, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Siva Kolluri, College of Agricultural Sciences
Read more about 2019 SciRIS awards.

SciRIS Stage 3 ($125,000)

Accelerating neuroactive microbial compounds discovery with gut-brain chip technology (2022)

  • Maude David, Microbiology
  • Kenton Hokanson, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Kathy Magnusson, College of Veterinary Medicine
  • Patrick Chappell, College of Veterinary Medicine
Read more.

Homoharringtonine: Chemical Synthesis and Evaluation of Designed Analogs (2020)

  • Christopher Beaudry, Chemistry
  • Victor Hsu, Biochemistry & Biophysics
  • Siva Kolluri, College of Agricultural Sciences
Read more.

SciRIS-ii (individual awards)

The SciRIS-ii program provides seed funding ranging from $10K to $20K to individual investigators to establish partnerships, accelerate project development, generate data and manuscripts and foster proposal submissions.

Similar to the SciRIS-ii, the Disease Mechanism and Prevention Fund is focused on assisting individual faculty efforts to establish research relationships with external partners specifically related to health science. These funds are provided by a generous gift from David and Donna Gould to support research into the mechanism, diagnosis, treatment and prevention of (human) disease.

Curvature and Symmetry (2024)

  • Christine Escher, Mathematics

Nonlinear Dispersive Equations with Variable Coefficients (2024)

  • Xueying Yu, Mathematics

Carborane-based Metal-organic Frameworks for Diagnosis and Therapy (2024)

  • Kyriakos Stylianou, Chemistry
Read about the 2024 award recipients.

Mechanical programming of four-dimensional tissue self-assembly (2023)

  • Bo Sun, Physics

Ultra-miniaturized spectrometers (2023)

  • Ethan Minot, Physics

Why is a fly a good model to study my grandmother’s tremors? (2023)

  • Alysia Vrailas-Mortimer

Exceptional Maps in Arithmetic Dynamical Systems (2022)

  • Clayton Petsche

Stochastic cascades and energy transfer in equations of fluid dynamics (2022)

  • Radu Dascaliuc, Mathematics

Innovating seed sampling devices and protocols (2022)

  • Yanming Di, Statistics

Establishing a zebrafish model for the study of the Ferlin gene Fer1L6 (2022)

  • Colin Johnson, Biochemistry and Biophysics

Exceptional maps in arithmetic dynamical systems (2022)

  • Clay Petsche, Mathematics

Probability law for 1D quantum electrons (2022)

  • Axel Saenz Rodriguez, Mathematics

Elucidating primary events of engineered photo switchable fluorescent proteins with a powerful ultrafast spectroscopy toolset (2022)

  • Chong Fang, Chemistry

​​​​​Mathematical modeling of Anthelmintic resistance in soil-transmitted Helminths (2022)

  • Swati Patel, Mathematics — Disease Mechanism and Prevention Fund

The role of the cathelicidin antimicrobial peptide in the development of Alzheimer’s disease (2020-22)

  • Adrian Gombart, Biochemistry and Biophysics — Disease Mechanism and Prevention Fund
Read more about the 2022 SciRIS ii and Disease Mechanism Prevention Fund awards.

Capturing molecular movies of chloride biosensors in action (2021)

  • Chong Fang, Chemistry

Selective, fast-response and regenerable metal-organic frameworks for sampling chemical contaminants in drinking water (2021)

  • Kyriakos Stylianou, Chemistry

Understanding properties of quantum materials for spintronics and magnon valleytronics (2021)

  • Oksana Ostroverkhova, Physics

Understanding the migrational phenotype plasticity of metastatic tumor cells (2019, 2020)

  • Bo Sun, Physics

Robust lipid-coated silver nanoparticles for diagnosis of triple-negative breast cancer using x-ray computer tomography imaging (2020)

  • Marilyn Mackiewicz, Chemistry — Disease Mechamism and Prevention Fund
Read more about the 2021 SciRIS ii and Disease Mechamism and Prevention Fund awards.

Optimal control of stochastic epidemics (2019)

  • Vrushali Bokil, Mathematics

Predicting the trajectory of toxic harmful algal blooms using multi-omics data integration (2019)

  • Kimberly Halsey, Microbiology

Developing new molecular simulation techniques to discover materials for clean energy applications (2019).

  • David Roundy, Physics

Estimating the number of people who inject drugs in metropolitan areas of the United States: A collaboration with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (2019)

  • Katherine McLaughlin, Statistics — Disease Mechanism and Prevention Fund
Read more about the 2019 SciRIS ii and Disease Mechanism and Prevention Fund awards.

Read more about SciRIS grants