OSU is tightly linked with the Portland area’s apparel community. Examples include: The OSU Design Network The network brings together professionals across the industry for informal gatherings and annual events in Portland, like last year’s Recycled Fashion Show — the longest-running fashion show of designs made from recycled materials in the country. OSU’s Apparel Research [...]
Category » Innovation
October 14, 2011
Willamette Innovators Night Spotlights Creative Economy
WiN is the Willamette Valley's largest gathering of businesses, researchers, inventors and policymakers focused on the creative economy.
“Made in Oregon” means more than lumber, hazelnuts and pears. At the annual Willamette Innovators Night (WiN) on Nov. 10, established manufacturers from Oregon Iron Works to startups such as Trillium FiberFuels and the AirShip Technologies Group will discuss how research and industry partnerships are changing the state’s economic landscape. “WiN provides a seedbed for [...]
September 14, 2011
Bright Idea
The future of solar energy could be on your desk — the inkjet printer
In the beginning, there was silicon, and it was really good. Silicon is one of the most abundant elements on Earth. It gave us golden, sandy beaches and sunlit kitchen windows. Beer mugs and home insulation. Silicon Valley in California and Silicon Forest in the Pacific Northwest. Personal computers and the Information Age. And solar [...]
September 14, 2011
Sticky Business
Incidental discovery could lead to a revolution in the adhesives industry
The OSU researchers were working toward a hot-melt adhesive made from cheap and plentiful vegetable oils that could be used in wood composites. For that purpose, they were making little progress. But at one point, Kaichang Li, an international expert in wood chemistry and composites, and his postdoctoral research associate, Anlong Li, noticed that their [...]
June 1, 2011
10 Places for Undergrads to Look for Research Opportunities
Support for student research can be as far away as a phone call or click of a mouse.
1. To help their peers find opportunities and OSU faculty members to mentor undergrads, a group of students worked with Susie Brubaker-Cole, associate provost for academic success and engagement, and Dan Arp, dean of the University Honors College, to produce a comprehensive guide to undergraduate research at Oregon State. 2. The OSU Research Office maintains [...]
May 31, 2011
Building a Better Student
One research project at a time
When undergraduate students do hands-on research with eminent professors on projects that matter, everyone wins. Students become better thinkers and citizens; the professors who mentor them become better teachers and researchers. Employers get access to employees with critical thinking, problem solving and communication skills that are so important in an economy increasingly dependent on innovation [...]
May 31, 2011
How Do You Know That?
“It is important that students bring a certain ragamuffin, barefoot irreverence to their studies; they are not here to worship what is known but to question it.”
— Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man
As an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins University in the 1970s, I immersed myself in learning about my field of choice, oceanography. I spent plenty of time in class studying the leading texts of the day. But my real education came from first-hand research experiences.
May 31, 2011
The Gamma and the Beta
Nuclear detection improves monitoring
Fast, accurate, affordable detection of radiation — whether it’s from Japan’s damaged Fukushima plant, long-buried waste at Hanford’s WWII weapons site, or secret underground testing by rogue nations — is a pressing need internationally. Now, detection technology has taken a notable leap forward. A newly patented invention from Oregon State University uses “phoswich” technology (short [...]
May 28, 2011
Blood Lines
Ishan Patel found his niche in biomedical engineering
It wasn’t the most elegant way to enter a lab. Ishan Patel had just met his mentor for the summer of 2009, Dr. Owen McCarty at Oregon Health & Science University. The OSU bioengineering student wanted to make a good impression, and when McCarty told him to go across the hall and meet his research [...]
February 21, 2011
Thinking Like a Physicist
OSU leads national effort to reform upper-level physics education
Walk into an upper-level college physics classroom almost anywhere in the country, and you’ll see students sitting down, listening to the professor and taking notes. Despite years of education research showing that students learn better by being active, the common curriculum for juniors and seniors in physics still emphasizes passivity. In recent years, a revolution [...]
February 10, 2011
Green Tower
A solution for the space-challenged gardener
If your taste buds yearn for home-grown tomatoes, spinach, onions, garlic, lettuce, potatoes and cukes, but your garden is the size of a postage stamp, Al Shay has an idea for you. The instructor in OSU’s Dept. of Horticulture has built a “green tower” that creates nearly 90 square feet of usable plant growing space [...]
February 1, 2011
Raised Voices
Sea Grant Extension helps communities address problems
Fishing is hard enough. The weather, changing ocean conditions and the fickleness of fish make it tough to track your quarry let alone catch them. Now competition for space in the ocean — an oxymoron in an environment defined by its seemingly limitless expanse — poses new concerns along the West Coast. In the future, [...]
February 1, 2011
From Research to Retail
Bringing science and business together for Oregon seafood
Gilbert “Gil” Sylvia spent childhood summers riding a bus through the lake-studded military base where he lived, hauling buckets of live fish from pond to pond. He and his buddies were trying to alter the balance of species for one reason: to boost their own catches. They never guessed that by dumping sunfish, bass and [...]
November 20, 2010
The Greening of Wood Products
Wood composites offer resilience, efficiency and strength.
November 20, 2010
Spin-Offs Boost Oregon’s Economy
Young companies based on research at OSU are attracting investment capital and creating job.
November 20, 2010
Neil Shay to Lead OSU’s Wine Institute
A molecular biologist who makes wine from his own grapes will lead research to support Oregon’s wine industry.
November 1, 2010
Willamette Innovators Night Will Showcase Grassroots Entrepreneurship
Innovation comes in many forms: life-saving robots, microbial fuel cells, carbonated fruit, plant-based lubricants and adhesives, and clothing that adjusts to your lifestyle.
October 26, 2010
OSU’s Next Gen Nuclear on Green Science Oregon
There are a lot of ways to boil water. Nuclear energy does it without emitting as much carbon as coal, oil or gas. In the search for safer and more efficient nuclear technology, Oregon State University operates one of the few nuclear reactors on a college campus in the United States. A new production by [...]
April 23, 2010
Tools of the Trade
Gramene database spurs quiet revolution in crop genetics
To find the genes that enable a crop — ryegrass or wheat, for example — to resist disease or tolerate drought can mean endless searching, not through one haystack but through many. And success is only the beginning of time-consuming breeding trials. Now scientists, farmers and plant breeders who feed the world have a new [...]
April 24, 2009
Building Materials for Sustainability
In the burgeoning green building sector, Oregon is poised to become a national leader. A new R&D partnership forged with cross-university linkages positions the state as a major powerhouse in sustainable materials, technologies and designs. Oregon BEST (Built Environment and Sustainable Technologies Center) has pulled together $1.6 million in multi-source funding to infuse and expand [...]
April 24, 2009
Kearney Hall, Showcase for Civil Engineers
An antiquated building on OSU’s northeast corner has undergone a thoroughly modern makeover. Celebrants who attend Kearney Hall’s grand opening on May 15 will observe its 19th-century heritage faithfully refurbished on the exterior. But on the inside, Kearney has been utterly transformed. With its recycled materials, nontoxic finishes, salvaged woods, efficient lighting, low-flow fixtures and [...]
April 24, 2009
Sensors for Safety
Microbiologists aim for rapid, accurate monitoring of food and water
The news grabbed national headlines in early 2009: eight dead, hundreds sickened by food poisoning in 34 states. After investigators traced the outbreak to Salmonella-tainted peanut butter from a Georgia plant, stores pulled thousands of products from their shelves. Worried consumers tossed suspect items into the trash. At least 100 companies will post losses from [...]
April 24, 2009
Eat Locally, Market Globally
Dann Cutter has maintained a reactor on a nuclear submarine and, for the past 12 years, kept the computer networks running at Oregon State University’s Hatfield Marine Science Center. He serves on the Waldport, Oregon city council and two state advisory boards (rural health care and transportation). Why, then, would he return to college for [...]
February 24, 2009
“Expedition” in Computational Sustainability
Scratch below the surface of a natural resources question and you’ll often find a tough nut to crack. The complex interactions among species and their habitats have bedeviled scientists from before Charles Darwin’s day to the present, preventing them in many cases from generating information that managers need to develop effective policies. Now a group [...]
February 24, 2009
Chemistry Goes Green in New OSU-UO Center
Creating more efficient, environmentally friendly electronics manufacturing practices is the goal of a new Green Materials Chemistry Center at Oregon State University and the University of Oregon.
February 24, 2009
On Course
Rob Golembiewski isn't letting the grass grow under his feet
Rob Golembiewski wears a size-13 shoe, but that’s nothing compared with the shoes he has to fill. The former head of the golf and turf management program at the University of Minnesota’s Crookston campus has replaced Tom Cook as the director of Oregon State University’s turf management program. Thirty-one years ago, the hardworking and revered [...]
January 23, 2009
Wired Watershed
Fiberoptics bring new precision to ecosystem sensing
It took a potato launcher, a canoe and a helium-filled balloon to propel a high-tech scientific enterprise during an international workshop at the H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest.
September 23, 2008
Fear and Loading
Whether you venture onto a few wooden planks over a trout stream, a steel colossus over a swift river or a concrete viaduct carrying bumper–to–bumper commuters, you trust the beams and girders to hold you up. This act of faith, made daily by millions of motorists on U.S. highways, was shaken last summer when a [...]
July 19, 2008
Sustainable Supply Chains
Recycling spurs innovation
Recycling isn’t just for consumers. Manufacturers are finding competitive advantages in what is known as “end-of-life product management,” says OSU business professor Zhaohui Wu. While dealing with old desktop computers and other high-tech cast-offs can be expensive, innovative companies are redesigning their products — and their supply chains — in response to “take-back” laws cropping [...]
