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| May, 2008 | update! RESEARCH NEWSLETTER |
| Featuring OSU research and scholarship in all disciplines
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| The Kerr skyway during the recent Innovation Renovation Celebration Open House. photo by Mike Haecker |
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The Research Office congratulates Jim Carrington, director of the Center for Genome Research and Biocomputing, who has received much-deserved recognition with his recent election as a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). One of the most prestigious honors that can be made to any scientist or engineer, NAS election is based on excellence in original scientific research. He was one of 72 scientists elected during the NAS annual meeting. “I feel very lucky to be elected. It's something that most scientists dream about, and I sincerely appreciate this honor," Carrington told Update. “I also think this reflects very positively on the caliber of research going on across the OSU campus. |
Keys to his success? According to Edith Birky, the Center’s Administrative Program Specialist, one may be Carrington’s extraordinary dedication and focus on quality. “Those of us in the CGRB are reminded that we can always keep raising the bar higher,” she says.
Other OSU faculty in the NAS: G. Brent Dalrymple, Geology, 1993; Harold Evans, Plant Biology, 1972; Jane Lubchenco, Environmental Sciences and Ecology, 1996; and K. Van Holde, Biophysics and Computational Biology, 1989.
See information about NAS
and OSU press release, and Gazette Times article
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Such ventures are supported by OSU’s International Student & Faculty Services. Jackie Bangs, International Scholar & Faculty Advisor, notes that OSU has long welcomed international faculty and scholars to teach, conduct research, and collaborate with colleagues. During an academic year, OSU hosts approximately 450 faculty and scholars from as many as 50 different countries. They serve as visiting professors, researchers, or interns and often have courtesy or affiliate faculty status.
"The Exchange Visitor program of the US Department of State allows us to enhance the diversity of our campus and its research efforts,” says Bangs. "I would definitely like to see more faculty hosting international visitors."
Faculty members who want to know more about hosting an international visitor can contact her at jackie.bangs@oregonstate.edu , 737-6468. For more information, visit the website.
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Update: You're an accomplished, productive researcher — why have you decided to move into this position? Dan Arp: I've enjoyed what I've been doing. This appeared as an attractive opportunity to take my enthusiasm for research and share it university-wide with 500 undergrads a year looking for extended scholarly engagement. I did teach introduction to Honors Thesis for ten years. Update: Do you plan to continue your research? DA: I do. I have a lab; I need grants to support my 'habit!' |
Update: What role does the Honors College have in the OSU research enterprise?
DA: Many faculty look forward to working with these high-achieving students, serving as advisor for the thesis project. Its one of the ways to connect professorial scholars with student-level scholars.
Update: Do you have changes in mind?
DA: From talking with a lot of people, we hope to get more faculty interested in engaging students earlier. If you bring a student into your lab when they are freshmen or sophomores, you have the opportunity for a longer term relationship, and you can get potentially much more for your investment. For the students, if they can become part of a research group earlier, it will become easier as they move along to see how they can carve out a piece for themselves and approach a thesis.
Update: Anything more you'd like to tell research colleagues?
DA: Some potential faculty advisors don't fully understand the Honors thesis. I tell people it's a toned-down Masters' thesis. Not as extensive, of course, but the process is similar, from getting a committee, to researching, writing, and defending.
I hope people will visit me in 229 Strand Hall. I'll see if there's an elevator there.
Update occasionally encounters OSU community members in elevators or on staircases- where they offer brief messages for colleagues across campus. If you have a suggestion of someone talk with, please contact us.
Drying ovens used to determine decomposition rates for wood, branches, leaves, and roots in forests. Studies of estrogen that may lead toward applications concerning the onset of postmenopausal weight gain and diabetes. A high performance liquid chromatograph enabling the analysis of contaminants, including fluorochemicals and illicit drugs in wastewater. Faculty release time to study the one-party rule in China.
Funds from Incentive Programs of the Research Office (Research Equipment Reserve Fund; Undergraduate Research, Innovation, Scholarship and Creativity; General Research Fund; and Faculty Release Time) have recently furthered such diverse projects by OSU faculty and students.
Please join us in appreciating Debbie Delmore of the Research Office, who does the fantastic work of coordinating the solicitations, applications, reviews, awards, announcements, and follow-up for these programs.
Joseph Karchesy’s invention will help to control arthropod pests of public health concern, such as mosquitoes, fleas, termites, cockroaches, and ticks. The innovation of Kartikeya Mayaram and Terri Fiez will efficiently analyze substrate noise in integrated circuits, decreasing engineering time and costs. John Wager is contributing to improvement of circuits in laptop computers and other consumer-, automotive-, and military-electronics information display products.
These and other recent patents by OSU faculty will be featured in a display in the LaSells Stewart Center as part of a week of celebration of OSU innovation and creativity.
See oregonstate.edu/events/excellence/
The OSU Office of Technology Transfer reports that in Fiscal Year 2006, faculty had 22 new patents filed, 9 US patents issued, 42 license/options executed, and 49 invention disclosures. |
The Microproducts Breakthrough Institute, a joint institute between OSU and Pacific Northwest National Labs (PNNL), has equipment and services available to the OSU community, and they are among the newest listings of Shared Facilities for the OSU community.
MBI offers:
Use the online resource to find additional services, instrumentation, and contacts. To include your facility, or to update your listing, please contact the Research Office .
Melissa Cheyney conducts meticulous research, yet early in her career she has already found that not everyone is open-minded about or welcoming of the results.
"They wanted to eat me for breakfast!," the OSU biomedical anthropologist told Update about her audience at a recent hearing in the midwest concerning legalization of midwifery, to which state senators had invited her as expert witness. "There were physicians who were out-and-out hostile, some yelling. One kicked over a chair and stormed out. Another told me that if I used my position to legitimize a woman’s right to choose a home delivery, 'the blood of all their dead babies' would be on my hands."
Her research interest, the safety of hospital vs. out-of-hospital birthing, is a controversial subject. As related deliberations increase among state legislators in Oregon and across the country, Cheyney has been receiving more invitations to help inform the debate. She is committed making research results available to the public and policy makers, with the goal of improving health care for mothers, babies, and families.
Her strategies for dealing with negative reactions: do your homework, and calmly present the facts. "And try not to take it personally," she said.
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Cheyney also has experience keeping calm as a practicing midwife, which she considers central to her research. She recently attended what she estimates as her 367th birth. She said, "I lost count for a little while at a birth center on the Mexican border . . . when during a flash flood, we were standing in three feet of water catching babies! I didn't get to log all of those names in my journal." Read more about Cheyney's research, and that of other OSU faculty who are passing on knowledge, in the summer issue of Terra, OSU's research magazine, coming in June. (Terra's Spring issue is already available.) |
| Cheyney examining client Amanda Wise in her home, as Wise's daughter looks on. photo by Karl Maasdam |
OSU faculty and students across arts and sciences — in sociology, biochemistry, anthropology, literature, rhetoric, history of science, creative writing, and pre-medical studies — joined with physicians, OHSU medical students, and others in the health professions for a conference in April exploring the intersection of two arts: healing and literature.
Does writing play a real part in healing? How can physicians better listen to a patient's story? How is diagnosis informed by literature? How does medicine serve art and art serve medicine? Why is there a new literary market in writing the medical experience?
Such questions were explored in the four-day series. Featured scholars and writers included a pediatrician, author, and medical educator from Columbia University, a pediatrician and novelist from Boston Children's Hospital, and a poet/radiation oncologist from San Francisco. Dr. Mary Ann Wallace of Good Samaritan Health Services led a public workshop on writing the medical experience.
"We were encouraged by the enthusiastic response by community members and medical professionals from up and down the Valley," said Anita Helle, who organized the conference with English Department colleagues Marjorie Sandor and Karen Holmberg . "We learned together about how writing humanizes medicine. It was clear from presentations and discussions, as well as our full-to-overflowing workshops, that people are fascinated by and passionate about writing the medical experience."
"We are exploring future opportunities to bring OSU researchers and writers together with medical professionals here and in Portland," said Helle. "And Columbia University 's Medical Humanities Program is interested in further scholarly exchanges with OSU faculty."
Events were co-sponsored by the OSU English Department and its Visiting Writers Series, the Valley Library, the OSU Office of the Provost, and the OSU Center for the Humanities, with community outreach partners: the Division of Integrative Medicine of Samaritan Health Services, and the Friends of the Corvallis-Benton County Library.
See
oregonstate.edu/cla/english/medicine-writing-and-humanities
Did you catch the ever-popular April Fool's edition of the Research Office Newsletter? Quick, catch up!
Update, The Research Office Newsletter is produced approximately monthly and announced via email to all OSU faculty and staff. Subscribe at http://lists.oregonstate.edu/mailman/listinfo/Update-the-Research-Office-Newsletter. Please send any news or comments to jana.zvibleman@oregonstate.edu . Link to archived issues.
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Phone 541-737-3437 Fax 541-737-3093
researchsupport@oregonstate.edu
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