(Photo: Eppic Photography)

Oregon State University forestry scientists have a habit of redefining the conversation about carbon and forests. Professors Beverly Law, Mark Harmon and their colleagues have demonstrated that old-growth stands on the west side of the Cascades store as much carbon or more than that held in tropical rain forests.

In 2009, Law reported that forests from the San Francisco Bay Area to the Columbia River could theoretically double the amount of carbon they currently contain.

In 2007 and 2009, her research group determined that Pacific Northwest fires emit less carbon than previously thought. Most emissions were from combustion of the forest floor and understory vegetation, and only about 1 to 3 percent of live tree mass was burned.

Not surprisingly, tree cutting turns forests from carbon sinks to carbon sources. Law has determined that it may take 15 years or more for young trees to begin absorbing more carbon than is lost through decomposition of branches, roots and other dead material. She conducted her studies in ponderosa pine, and her conclusions were later confirmed in an international study of boreal and temperate forests.

Ameriflux Network

Now, Law has co-authored a national study concluding that forests and other terrestrial ecosystems in the lower 48 states can sequester up to 40 percent of the nation’s fossil fuel carbon emissions, a larger amount than previously estimated, unless a large drought or other major disturbance occurs.

Carbon dioxide, when released by the burning of fossil fuels, forest fires or other activities, is a major “greenhouse gas” and factor in global warming. But vegetation, mostly in the form of growing evergreen and deciduous forests, can play an important role in absorbing some of the excess carbon dioxide.

Widespread droughts, such as those that occurred in 2002 and 2006, can cut the amount of carbon sequestered by about 20 percent, Law and her colleagues concluded in a study that was supported by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Department of Energy.

The research, published by scientists from 35 institutions in the journal Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, was based on satellite measurements and data from the AmeriFlux network, a system of nearly 100 carbon-monitoring sites in the Americas.

Not all of these data had been incorporated into earlier estimates, and the new study provides one of the most accurate assessments to date of the nation’s terrestrial carbon balance.

“With climate change, we may get more extreme or frequent weather events in the future than we had before,” Law adds. “About half of the United States was affected by the major droughts in 2002 and 2006, which were unusual in their spatial extent and severity. And we’re now learning that this can have significant effects on the amount of carbon sequestered in a given year.”

Climate Mapping

Such information is important to understand global climate issues and develop policies, the researchers note. This study examined the carbon budget in the United States from 2001 to 2006. Also playing a key role in the analysis was OSU’s PRISM climate database, a sophisticated system to monitor weather on a very localized and specific basis.

The period from 2001 to 2006, the researchers say, had some catastrophic and unusual events, not the least of which was Hurricane Katrina and the massive destruction it caused. It also factored in the 2002 Biscuit Fire in Northern California and southwest Oregon, which burned nearly 500,000 acres and was among the largest forest fires in modern U.S. history.

The research found that temperate forests in eastern states absorbed carbon mainly because of forest re-growth following the abandonment of agricultural lands, while some areas of the Pacific Northwest assimilated carbon during much of the year because of the region’s mild climate.

Croplands were not considered in determining the annual magnitude of the U.S. terrestrial carbon sink, because the carbon they absorb each year during growth will be soon released when the crops are harvested or their biomass burned.

The study was led by Jingfeng Xiao, a research assistant professor at the Complex Systems Research Center, Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space, at the University of New Hampshire.

“Our results show that U.S. ecosystems play an important role in slowing down the buildup of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion.

Ø Online: See more about Beverly Law’s terrestrial ecosystem research at terraweb.forestry.oregonstate.edu/

Oregon State University Professor Scott Ashford measures ground upheaval during a visit to Japan following a major earthquake there. (photo courtesy GEER)

“Our mission is to get word out to the scientific community about what’s happened on the ground,” he says. As a geotechnical engineer, he is particularly interested in soil changes following an earthquake. His findings raise questions about the adequacy of building standards in the United States and abroad.

In the past year, Ashford has inspected the aftermaths of quakes in Chile, New Zealand and Japan. The work demands humility. Out of respect for people who lived through terrifying events, he warns younger colleagues to avoid expressing excitement over significant findings. “We’re amongst people who have had their lives ruined and are in upheaval,” he says. “Even though it’s exciting to see the things we’ve been doing research on in action, you can’t show any of that. It’s an emotional rollercoaster.”

And it demands a keen eye. Careful measurements of structural damage, landslides, soil liquefaction and shifted fault lines can help engineers to design more resilient structures. The whole point is to save lives and reduce the damage that will occur when the next Big One hits, a goal shared by more than a dozen of Ashford’s colleagues in engineering and geophysical sciences at OSU.

Buildings on Quicksand

Ashford has seen buildings torn in half as if they were made of LEGOs®, bridges demolished or jackknifed on their foundations and utility pipes squeezed out of the ground. One his team’s most significant findings came from the March 11 subduction zone earthquake in Japan, which caused soil liquefaction — wet sands, gravels, silts and fill materials turned into soup as they shake, with all the load-bearing capacity of quicksand — that surprised researchers with its geographic extent and widespread severity.

In order to gather evidence of this phenomenon, Ashford and his team looked for sand boils (small sand volcanoes) and lateral spreads — that is, shallow landslides triggered by liquefaction. Although they arrived only two weeks after the initial quake, cleanup was already taking place, erasing evidence in some locations, which is why GEER teams are sent in quickly after a major event.

“The data are very perishable,” he says. But the more evidence they can gather about how soil has altered during an earthquake, the better engineers will be at predicting the outcomes of future quakes.

Collapsed bridge in Santiago, Chile, after the 2010 earthquake. (Photo courtesy of Scott Ashford)

“We’ve seen localized examples of soil liquefaction as extreme as this before, but the distance and extent of damage in Japan were unusually severe. Entire structures were tilted and sinking into the sediments, even while they remained intact. The shifts in soil destroyed water, sewer and gas pipelines, crippling the utilities and infrastructure these communities need to function. We saw some places that sank as much as four feet.”

Parts of the West Coast of the United States are vulnerable to the phenomenon. They include Portland, parts of the Willamette Valley and other areas of Oregon, Washington and California. Around San Francisco Bay, for example, the U.S. Geological Survey categorizes most of the low-lying lands as having moderate to very high susceptibility to liquefaction.

Some degree of soil liquefaction is common in almost any major earthquake. It can allow structures to shift or sink and significantly magnify the structural damage produced by the shaking itself.

New Construction Standards

But most earthquakes are much shorter than the event in Japan, Ashford adds. The length of the Japanese earthquake, as much as five minutes, may force researchers to reconsider the extent of liquefaction damage possible in situations such as this.

“With such a long-lasting earthquake, we saw how structures that might have been OK after 30 seconds just continued to sink and tilt as the shaking continued for several more minutes,” he says. “And it was clear that younger sediments, and especially areas built on recently filled ground, are much more vulnerable.”

The data provided by analyzing the Japanese earthquake should make it possible to improve the understanding of this soil phenomenon and better prepare for it in the future. Ashford says it was critical for the team to collect the information quickly, before damage was removed in the recovery efforts.

“There’s no doubt that we’ll learn things from what happened in Japan that will help us to mitigate risks in other similar events,” Ashford adds. “Future construction in some places may make more use of techniques known to reduce liquefaction, such as better compaction to make soils dense, or use of reinforcing stone columns.”

The massive subduction zone earthquakes capable of this type of shaking, which are the most powerful in the world, don’t happen everywhere, even in other regions such as Southern California that face seismic risks. But an event almost exactly like that is expected in the Pacific Northwest from the Cascadia Subduction Zone, and the new findings make it clear that liquefaction will be a critical issue there.

West Coast on Edge

Many parts of that region, from northern California to British Columbia, have younger soils vulnerable to liquefaction — on the coast, near river deposits or in areas with filled ground. These “young” sediments, in geologic terms, may be those deposited within the past 10,000 years or more. In Oregon, for instance, that describes much of downtown Portland, the Portland International Airport, nearby industrial facilities and other cities and parts of the Willamette Valley.

Anything near a river and old flood plains is a suspect, and the Oregon Department of Transportation has already concluded that 1,100 bridges in the state are at risk from an earthquake on the Cascadia Subduction Zone. Fewer than 15 percent of them have been retrofitted to prevent collapse.

Based on reports by the U.S. and California geological surveys, this San Francisco Bay Area map shows areas with water-saturated sandy and silty materials that are susceptible to liquefaction if shaken hard enough. (Map courtesy of the Association of Bay Area Governments)

“Buildings that are built on soils vulnerable to liquefaction not only tend to sink or tilt during an earthquake, but slide downhill if there’s any slope, like towards a nearby river,” Ashford says. “This is called lateral spreading. In Portland we might expect this sideways sliding of more than four feet in some cases, more than enough to tear apart buildings and buried pipelines.”

Some damage may be reduced or prevented by different construction techniques or retrofitting. But another reasonable goal is to at least anticipate the damage, to know what will probably be destroyed, make contingency plans for what will be needed to implement repairs and design ways to help protect and care for residents until services can be restored.

The survey in Japan identified areas as far away as Tokyo Bay that had liquefaction-induced ground failures. The magnitude of settlement and tilt was “larger than previously observed for such light structures,” the GEER researchers wrote in their report.

Impacts and deformation were erratic, often varying significantly from one street to the next. Port facilities along the coast faced major liquefaction damage. Strong Japanese construction standards helped prevent many buildings from collapse – even as they tilted and sank into the ground.

Collaboration Is Key

The GEER team always pairs up with researchers from the country where they’re working. This not only helps them with cultural and language issues, but allows them to be guided by the hosting country’s scientists as to where it’s appropriate, and safe, to conduct their research. It is also a great way to foster international collaboration.

“You can develop strong personal bonds with someone spending a week together in the car doing an earthquake reconnaissance,” Ashford says. And it is those personal relationships that make the follow-up research collaboration possible.

During his trip to Japan, Ashford had to balance his own emotional reactions to the devastation. A colleague there showed him a video that hadn’t been aired on television. It was a shot of the water level rising on the Japanese coast as witnesses gathered on the shore, unaware of the danger. In a flash, the tsunami waves hit the coast, obliterating everything, and everyone, standing on the shore.

“We both teared up,” Ashford says. “It was very emotional to see that.”

—   Linus Pauling, 1983

Linus Pauling spent the latter years of his career at Stanford University and at the scientific institute that bears his name exploring the role of micronutrients in health, from the common cold to cancer. By the time he wrote the paragraph above, he had received two unshared Nobel Prizes and had become well known for his advocacy of vitamin C mega-doses. Today, his legacy lives on through the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers Collection, the Linus Pauling Institute (LPI) and a new 105,000-square-foot science center at Oregon State University.

Two recent reports from LPI scientists demonstrate their ongoing efforts to understand the relationship between health and dietary compounds.

Green Tea for the Immune System

Green tea drinkers may be on to something. Scientists have found that a beneficial compound in the ancient beverage has a powerful ability to increase the number of “regulatory T cells” (a type of white blood cell) that play a key role in immune function and suppression of autoimmune disease. This may be one of the underlying mechanisms for the health benefits of green tea, which has attracted wide interest for its ability to help control inflammation, improve immune function and prevent cancer.

Emily Ho's research focuses on naturally occuring compounds that play a role in cell regulation. Better understanding of these processes could lead to treatments for cancer and other diseases. (Photo: Kelly James)

“This appears to be a natural, plant-derived compound that can affect the number of regulatory T cells, and in the process improve immune function,” says Emily Ho, an LPI principal investigator and associate professor in the OSU Department of Nutrition and Exercise Sciences. “When fully understood, this could provide an easy and safe way to help control autoimmune problems and address various diseases.”

The immune system performs a delicate balancing act between attacking unwanted invaders and protecting normal cells. In autoimmune diseases, which can range from simple allergies to terminal conditions such as Lou Gehrig’s disease, this process goes awry, and the body mistakenly attacks itself.

Some cells exist primarily to help control that problem and dampen or “turn off” the immune system, including regulatory T cells. The number and proper function of those regulatory T cells, in turn, are regulated by other biological processes such as transcription factors and DNA methylation.

In this study, scientists exposed laboratory mice to a compound in green tea called epigallocatechin gallate, or EGCG, which has both anti-inflammatory and anti-cancer characteristics. They found that mice with higher EGCG levels had a higher production of regulatory T cells. Its effects were not as potent as some of those produced by prescription drugs, but it also had few concerns about long-term use or toxicity.

“EGCG may have health benefits through an epigenetic mechanism, meaning we aren’t changing the underlying DNA codes, but just influencing what gets expressed, what cells get turned on,” Ho says. “And we may be able to do this with a simple, whole-food approach.”

The findings were published in Immunology Letters, a professional journal. Co-authors included scientists from OSU, the University of Connecticut and Changwon National University in South Korea. The National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the OSU Agricultural Experiment Station supported the work.

Tea consumption was also the focus of one of the LPI’s most frequently cited papers. In 2003, scientists Jane Higdon and Balz Frei, LPI director, published a survey of studies on tea and the incidence of cancer, coronary heart disease and other illnesses.

For the Love of Cauliflower

If you ever needed a reason to eat broccoli, Brussels sprouts or cauliflower, consider sulforaphane. Ho and other LPI scientists have shown for the first time that this phytochemical can selectively target and kill prostate cancer cells while leaving normal cells healthy and unaffected.

The findings are another important step forward for the potential use of sulforaphane in cancer prevention and treatment. Clinical prevention trials are already under way for its use in these areas, particularly prostate and breast cancer.

It appears that sulforaphane, which is found at fairly high levels in cruciferous vegetables, is an inhibitor of histone deacetylase, or HDAC enzymes. HDAC inhibition is one of the more promising fields of cancer treatment and is being targeted from both a pharmaceutical and dietary approach, scientists say.

“It’s important to demonstrate that sulforaphane is safe if we propose to use it in cancer prevention or therapies,” says Ho, lead author on the study. “Just because a phytochemical or nutrient is found in food doesn’t always mean it’s safe, and a lot can also depend on the form or levels consumed,” Ho adds. “But this does appear to be a phytochemical that can selectively kill cancer cells, and that’s always what you look for in cancer therapies.”

The findings were published in Molecular Nutrition and Food Research, a professional journal. The research was supported by the National Cancer Institute, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences and the OSU Agricultural Experiment Station.

Previous OSU studies done with mouse models showed that prostate tumor growth was slowed by a diet containing sulforaphane.

In 2008, I participated in one of the few scientific expeditions aimed at characterizing the abundance of plastic debris and the associated impacts of plastic on microbial communities. That expedition was part of research funded by the National Science Foundation through C-MORE, the Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education.

Plastic “nurdles,” a pre-production material for manufacturing plants, are a common cargo in merchant vessels and a significant component of ocean pollution. OSU oceanographer Charles Miller recovered these plastic bits (about 3 millimeters across, less than half the size of a pencil eraser) from the North Pacific gyre in 1971. (Photo: David Reinert, COAS; photoillustration, Teresa Hall)

Standing on the bow of a research ship, floating in the heart of the alleged garbage patch, my colleagues and I looked out onto a calm, apparently pristine blue ocean. By towing a mesh net through these waters and deploying instruments capable of measuring particle size and abundance, it became clear that the sea around us actually contained few, very small pieces of plastic. If you were to line up 1,000 1-liter Nalgene™ bottles filled with ocean water from this location, one to five of them would contain a single piece of plastic roughly the size of a worn-down pencil eraser. In comparison, plankton (millions to billions of organisms per milliliter) outnumber and outweigh plastic by a considerable measure.

The amount of plastic out there isn’t inconsequential, but using the highest concentrations ever reported by scientists, the plastic debris floating in the surface waters of the North Pacific could be rounded up to produce a patch that is a small fraction of the state of Texas, not twice the size. This is not to say that the issue of plastic in the ocean should be dismissed; rather, the problem is more complex and enigmatic.

One of the longest records of ocean plastic comes from the western North Atlantic. Compiling a 22-year survey of plastic debris, researchers reported concentrations very similar to what we found in the Pacific, but there was a catch. The amount of plastic in the North Atlantic has not increased since the mid-1980s, despite a surge in plastic production over the same period. This unexpected conclusion has led to a lot of speculation: Are we doing a better job of preventing plastics from getting into the ocean? Is more plastic sinking out of the surface waters? Is plastic being more efficiently broken down? At present, we just don’t know.

New research findings may point to one part of the answer: microbes! Not only is plastic prime real estate for microbes, but they may actively degrade it. This interesting finding may partially explain the mystery of “missing plastic” in the Atlantic.

If there is a take-home message, it’s that plastic clearly does not belong in the ocean. The practical solution is to reduce the input of plastic into our oceans in the first place. There is no need to exaggerate the problem to Texas-sized proportions.

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 energy — in its infancy. But for this critically important energy source, which is one of the most promising of all the alternative energy forms, silicon may not be the only source.

Illustration by Gavin Potenza

“Solar energy has enormous potential, but to reach that potential with large-scale electrical generation we’re probably going to need something besides current silicon technology,” says Chih-hung Chang, professor of chemical engineering at Oregon State University and director of the Oregon Process Innovation Center for Sustainable Solar Cell Manufacturing, or OPIC.

“We need huge improvements in solar cell manufacturing, to lower costs and reduce environmental impacts at the same time,” he adds. “Silicon will probably always be a significant player, but for mass commercial power production we will need additional solutions.”

Those solutions, OSU researchers say, may be with thin-film compounds that have an ability to outperform silicon by capturing more energy from photons at a lower cost, such as one called chalcopyrite that’s made from copper, indium, gallium and selenium. Or a less expensive but also promising compound made from copper, zinc, tin and sulfide.

There is one problem. Chalcopyrite doesn’t offer the crisp name recognition of Silicon Valley. So that’s bad. The wordsmiths may have to think of a catchy or colorful name.

But that aside, it could work better and usher in an era of high performing, rapidly produced, ultra-low-cost thin-film solar electronics. And it’s happening right now in Oregon.

Bay Area Partners

“We have five private companies already working with OPIC, including some Bay Area companies, and we’ve had discussions with several others,” says Greg Herman, an OSU associate professor of chemical engineering and associate director of the center. “So far this has attracted around $3 million in support, and Oregon is continuing to evolve as a focus of the solar energy industry.”

Earlier this summer, OSU researchers took an important step in that direction with a publication and patent application on a new technology that, for the first time, has created successful solar devices with inkjet printing. This rather pedestrian technology that decades ago revolutionized home and small office printing may now have unanticipated benefits for solar energy.

This novel approach reduces raw material waste by 90 percent. Instead of depositing chemical compounds on a substrate with more expensive vapor phase deposition — wasting most of the material in the process — inkjet technology creates precise patterning with a very low waste.

“Some of the materials we want to work with for the most advanced solar cells, such as indium, are relatively expensive,” Chang says. “If that’s what you’re using you can’t really afford to waste it, and the inkjet approach almost eliminates the waste.”

Power Conversion

So far, researchers have created an ink that can print chalcopyrite onto substrates with a power conversion efficiency of about 5 percent. With continued research they hope to achieve an efficiency of about 12 percent, which would make a commercially viable solar cell. In related work, Herman is continuing research with other compounds that might also be used with inkjet technology and cost even less.

Others are helping. OPIC is a collaboration of OSU, the University of Oregon, Portland State University, Oregon Institute of Technology, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, private industry and the Oregon Built Environment and Sustainable Technologies Center (Oregon BEST). Support is being sought from the U.S. Department of Energy, National Science Foundation, and Department of Defense. Collaborators are coming from Germany, Taiwan and South Korea.

In another advance reported last year, researchers used a “microreactor-assisted nanomaterial deposition” process to rapidly deposit thin films for solar cells, sidestepping more expensive processes such as sputtering and evaporation.

There may even be spinoffs that go beyond solar energy. Another application of these deposition processes is use of nanostructure films as coatings for eyeglasses, which could capture more light, reduce glare and cost less than existing coatings.

But solar energy is the primary target, and making Oregon a focus of that industry is a significant goal.

“We think with improved manufacturing processes and new materials, we can cut the materials cost of solar cells and produce these materials with low-cost, Earth-abundant materials in an environmentally sustainable way,” Herman says.

But at one point, Kaichang Li, an international expert in wood chemistry and composites, and his postdoctoral research associate, Anlong Li, noticed that their adhesive seemed to be very sticky at room temperature. They tried a pretty simple experiment – rubbing some of it on a piece of paper – and quickly realized they had created a very different kind of pressure-sensitive adhesive.

Kaichang Li developed a new pressure-sensitive adhesive for potential use in a global industry with estimated revenues of $20 billion. Anlong Li (no relation), a research associate, collaborated on the project.

From that fortunate incident, the scientists proceeded through a rigorous analysis to identify a promising new adhesive material, and it has now been licensed to Avery Dennison Corporation, which will explore developing it into commercially viable pressure-sensitive adhesives. These are used in everything from consumer packaged goods labels to sticky notes and postage stamps.

“This could become a pretty amazing adhesive,” says Kaichang Li, a professor in the OSU College of Forestry. “It’s made from renewable sources and could reduce our use of petroleum products, it’s remarkably simple to make, and it could cost less than existing petrochemical-based products.”

$20 Billion Market

OSU has applied for a patent on the process, naming Kaichang Li and Anlong Li as the inventors. The licensee, Avery Dennison, is a California-based world leader in adhesive materials technology. The Fredonia Group estimates the annual global market for pressure-sensitive adhesive tapes is more than $20 billion.

“This relationship underscores the importance of working with the business community to market technologies developed at OSU,” says Brian Wall, director of the OSU Office for Commercialization and Corporate Development.

There have been previous attempts to make pressure-sensitive adhesives from vegetable oils, the researchers say, but they used the same type of polymerization chemistry as the acrylate-based, pressure-sensitive adhesives now used to make tape. That technology didn’t cost much less or perform as well.

“This new technology appears to have real promise, and we’re eager to explore its potential,” says Dave Edwards, Avery Dennison’s vice president and chief technology officer. “We want to find out if this material can be translated into adhesives that can consistently meet the high performance standards of the industry while providing ourselves and our customers with greater flexibility in terms of sourcing and options that are, additionally, more sustainable.”

Renewable Materials

Anlong Li, the research associate who collaborated with Kaichang Li in creating the new compound, says it could have many advantages. “The new material could be made of naturally renewable substances entirely. You could make this adhesive from several different vegetable oils, such as soy, linseed, canola, palm, corn or sunflower oil. The process doesn’t use any organic solvents or toxic chemicals, so it could reduce our need for petrochemicals that are being depleted and increasingly expensive. It could become very important in the global market.”

The new approach developed at OSU is based on a different type of polymerization process that offers both low cost and improved performance.

It wasn’t what the researchers set out to create.

It was even better.

Illustration by Teresa Hall

After nearly 30 years, I’ve returned, criss-crossing the Quad, delighting in rhododendrons, sporting orange and black, ignoring rain. It’s great to feel the familiarity. It’s invigorating to be surrounded by progress.

Now I lead the research enterprise of the university that, early on, enticed me to inquire into real issues. When I was a New York high-schooler, OSU’s pre-college program invited me west, affording the opportunity to bunk in Sackett Hall and to explore Oregon’s coast, mountains and deserts through the state’s land grant university. I was awed by the role the environment plays in so much of what we do. Inspiration by top-notch teachers drew me back for graduate studies, where I found the focus on the “big picture” even stronger. Now I see more K-20 enrichment programs, and I’m personally committed to bringing youth to campus and to encouraging our undergrads to do real research.

Years ago, I considered the campus and Corvallis community just about complete, with close proximity to everything I needed. I wrote most of my thesis sitting at the Beanery! Yet I’m amazed at how much OSU has expanded. From my office, I’m watching a major renovation of picturesque Education Hall, with its huge rough-hewn stones. A short walk away, I visit the new Hallie Ford Center for Healthy Children and Families. The Linus Pauling Science Center, home to a national Center of Excellence for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, is almost complete, and ground was just broken for a $10 million animal science teaching and research pavilion. A new building for the College of Business is on the drawing boards.

The O.H. Hinsdale Wave Research Laboratory, which of course did not exist in my student days, has one of the world’s most sophisticated tsunami test facilities. And progress is not just bricks and mortar: programs are growing in stature and impact. Our 12-year-old Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is receiving national accolades, and accreditation of the College of Public Health and Human Sciences will enable us to lead new initiatives in health and wellness.

Richard Spinrad, Vice President for Research, Oregon State University

I studied with a wonderful oceanography professor, Ron Zaneveld, and with such legends as Wayne Burt, June Pattullo and John Byrne. I don’t have room to list our current faculty who are world-respected experts and great mentors. The pace of research was slower back in the ‘70s; students were expected to spend significant time in field work, which I did all over the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. Today’s students have the advantages of cruising via the Internet, of course, yet they still have fantastic experiences in the wide world.

Our research applications are exciting, and many may be of personal relevance to you, as they are to me. OSU prioritizes the health of people, our environment and our economy: improving the human “healthspan”; smart strategies for earthquake and tsunami preparedness; advances in wave energy and other carbon-free energy sources; innovations in manufacturing technologies.