NIH funding for Tasmanian devil cancer research

WSU biologist Andrew Storfer’s work on cancer in Tasmanian devils is one of eight studies awarded funding recently by the National Institutes of Health/ National Science Foundation’s Ecology and Evolution of Infectious Diseases program. Storfer is the principle investigator of an international collaboration with researchers in Australia that received $2.3 million from the NIH to […]

Music professor wins American Prize for jazz composition

Greg Yasinitsky, Regents professor and director of the WSU School of Music is the winner of the 2017-18 The American Prize in Composition in the pops/light music division. Yasinitsky’s composition “Jazz Concerto for Piano and Orchestra” was selected over applications from across the United States. It is a “third stream work which blends classical music […]

Music educator, choral director Luethi to succeed Yasinitsky as music school director

Dean Luethi, associate professor and coordinator of music education in the School of Music, will begin serving as director of the vibrant and diverse school on April 1. Greg Yasinitsky, Regents professor and school director since 2011, will resume his faculty position and award-winning work in the jazz studies program, teaching saxophone, composition, arranging, and […]

Aurora Clark joins National Academies Committee

Aurora Clark, WSU chemistry profesor and deputy director of the IDREAM Energy Frontier Research Center, has been appointed to a National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s committee. The committee will develop the agenda for basic research in separations science. Through this agenda, they will lay the groundwork for a new era in separations focusing […]

Historical detective story traces Indian Ocean slave saga

A detailed family saga set against the broader context of South Asian slavery, plantation life, Parisian society and French colonization, “Madeleine’s Children: Family, Freedom, Secrets, and Lies in France’s Indian Ocean Colonies” by history professor Sue Peabody traces the multigenerational biography of a slave family and their legal battles for freedom. Peabody is one of […]

WSU/UI team to develop national milk conference

A team of researchers from Washington State University and the University of Idaho has received a $50,000 grant from the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grants Program to organize a national conference in Washington, D.C., on the compositions of bovine and human milk. “Human milk is the only food ever designed by nature […]

In the company of penguins, whales, and pteropods

Luana Lins, a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Biological Sciences, is fresh off a month-long visit studying polar organisms as part of the National Science Foundation’s Training Program in Antarctica for Early-Career Scientists. When she wasn’t counting bacteria or extracting the DNA of pteropods, Lins was visited by penguins, watched whales, and toured the […]

$1 million Keck Foundation grant to develop self-replicating materials

Chemistry researchers at WSU have been awarded $1 million from the W.M. Keck Foundation to develop molecular machines that self-replicate, producing pounds of 100-percent pure material. Their research is the first step towards a new paradigm in manufacturing where everything from smartphones to life-saving cancer drugs could be designed one atom at a time to […]

Dr. Universe: What experiments can you recommend?

You can try all kinds of fun experiments at home. It really all depends on what you are curious about. Lately, I’ve seen some really great sunsets and started wondering what gives them their colors. I decided to ask my friend Tom Johnson, who leads fun physics demonstrations for kids visiting Washington State University. I asked […]

Professor’s research to help choral conductors in India

Dean Luethi, associate professor in the WSU School of Music, has been asked by the National Association for Music Educators (NAFME) to produce four levels of choral conducting instruction to be offered via online videos so choral conductors in India can earn a mini-credential by the Western Music Educators Association (WMEA) in music instruction. The NAFME […]