Faculty

Funding boost to develop rice for the future

WSU is part of an international effort involving seven institutions to revolutionize rice production. Led by co-principal investigator Asaph Cousins, a professor in WSU’s School of Biological Sciences, and colleagues at University of Oxford, the “C4 Rice Project” recently earned a five‑year, $15 million grant renewal from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The project aims to […]

Searching for La Belle Dame

Where in the world had the Clumber Park Chartier disappeared to? Joan Grenier-Winther, a Marianna M. and Donald S. Matteson Distinguished Professor of Foreign Languages at WSU Vancouver, really needed to examine the fifteenth-century collection of poems by Alain Chartier and others. After all, her critical edition and translation of an unusual poem of the […]

WSU political media expert on BBC

Several hotly contested government seats and the likely fate of Brexit were all up for grabs in the Dec. 12 general election in the UK. To find out how social media and other digital campaign tactics are being used to influence—or manipulate—British voters, BBC World Service invited Travis Ridout, WSU political science professor and political […]

Chemist named as a AAAS Fellow

Professor Aurora Clark and three other WSU colleagues were recently elected as Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), a high honor recognizing their contributions to science and technology. Clark’s research includes modeling of complex, multicomponent solutions, providing the basic science needed to help solve many industrial problems. Her work has […]

Dr. Universe: How do places get their names?

One way a place might get a name is from the person who explored it. The Americas are named after an Italian explorer, Amerigo Vespucci. But Amerigo wasn’t the first person to explore these continents, and people living there when he arrived. For the most part, people name things because they are claiming possession of […]

History project to share stories of fallen WWII Cougars

A legendary quarterback, class president, and triple-sport letterman turned husband, father and high school coach. A first-generation college student and son of a modest farming family. A business major, fraternity brother, and newlywed turned Wildcat fighter pilot. An international scholar who left the Philippines to attend college 7,000 miles away … and never returned. The […]

Cannabis reduces headache and migraine pain by nearly half

Inhaled cannabis reduces self-reported headache severity by 47.3% and migraine severity by 49.6%, according to a recent study led by Carrie Cuttler, a Washington State University assistant professor of psychology. The study, published online recently in the Journal of Pain, is the first to use big data from headache and migraine patients using cannabis in […]

Living at the edges

Resembling an overgrown house cat with black-tipped ears and a stubby tail, the Canada lynx, a native of North America, teeters on the brink of extinction in the U.S. The few lynx that now roam parts of Washington and the mountainous Northwest survive largely because of a network of protected landscapes that crosses the U.S.–Canada […]