Amid times of uncertainty, science delivers solutions. Oregon State scientists are addressing the great challenges of our time. They are developing clean energy solutions, discovering solutions to warming oceans, and probing virus DNA to cure diseases. Our students are involved every step of the way, and we are committed to equipping them to develop tomorrow’s solutions. Join us.
recipient of research funding in Oregon
of all STEM students in Oregon attend Oregon State.
City (Corvallis) in the nation for patents issued per capita
Research labs making new ground-breaking discoveries every year
First-generation college student Diego Rodriguez worked in biochemistry assistant professor Afua Nyarko’s lab researching the origins of diseases like cancer, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s and muscular dystrophy. While an undergraduate, he published multiple papers and received numerous awards.
Rodriguez is now working at the Broad Institute at MIT and Harvard investigating which genes in cancerous cells lead to chemotherapy resistance. “Afua is the reason I am a scientist today. Her mentorship, patience and time are what made everything else possible.”
Half of Oregon State Science undergraduates work on research projects. Through programs like URSA Engage, SURE Science and other funded research experiences, students are doing real, world-changing research like exploring new cancer treatments, protecting marine ecosystems and developing new biofuels.
Corals that appear healthy are more prone to getting sick when they’re home to too many parasitic bacteria, new research at Oregon State University shows. “The clear relationship we’ve discovered between this kind of bacteria and disease resistance in Caribbean staghorn coral is a crucial piece of the puzzle for coral restoration efforts in that region,” said study co-author Becca Maher, a Ph.D. candidate at Oregon State.
An international research collaboration, led by Kyriakos Stylianou, an assistant professor of chemistry at Oregon State University, has taken an important step toward the commercially viable manufacture of biobutanol, an alcohol whose strong potential as a fuel for gasoline-powered engines could pave the path away from fossil fuels. The researchers are now looking to partner with industry to try to scale up the separation method using the new metal organic framework, says Stylianou, the study’s corresponding author. If it scales well, it could be an important milestone on the road toward non-reliance on fossil fuels.
Team-based Rapid Assessment of Community-Level Coronavirus Epidemics, or TRACE-COVID-19, was launched by OSU in April 2020 with door-to-door sampling in Corvallis and expanded to other cities around the state while also adding a wastewater testing component. In December, OSU received a $2 million grant from the David and Lucile Packard Foundation to create a national TRACE Center that will expand the OSU’s COVID-19 public health project to other states.
The College of Science awarded two interdisciplinary teams funding to pursue promising leads in mental health and cancer research. One team will investigate the role of the gut-brain axis on sex differences in anxiety, and another will explore ways to develop an synthetic version of HHT-- a rare plant alkaloid that is showing great promise in the development of new medicines for multiple forms of cancer.