Research

CAS faculty initiatives to enhance future undergraduate education

Five College of Arts and Sciences faculty members have been selected to receive funding from the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Teaching and Learning Endowment for four projects that will enhance undergraduate teaching and learning. College of Arts and Sciences recipients of the 2018‑19 competitive grants and their projects are:

McNair scholar bridges cultures in life, research

It’s fall 2014. New freshman Lysandra Perez, the first in her family to attend college, sits on the bed in her Streit-Perham Hall dorm room. The emotional farewells are done, and her parents are driving back home to the small town of Moxee, near Yakima. Her roommates won’t be arriving for another few days. She […]

Defining his own non-traditional path

Family is core to who Geoff Schramm is as a friend, a person, but especially as a father and husband. It’s the reason why he decided to go back to school at Washington State University Tri-Cities in his late 30s – a decision that led to many people asking him, “Why?”

$3M interdisciplinary grant to pursue epigenetic biomarkers

Washington State University researchers have received nearly $3 million from the John Templeton Foundation, the second such grant in four years, to see if they can anticipate and prevent diseases by developing epigenetic biomarkers that could provide early stage diagnostics for disease susceptibility. Their approach would be a departure from traditional “reactionary medicine,” which treats diseases after […]

‘Apple to Glass’ grant supports improving cider industry

Hard apple cider is growing in popularity around the country, and craft ciders from small cideries are the fastest growing segment of that market. Equipped with a grant from the USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture, a new group, led by Washington State University researchers, will work with orchardists and cider makers to develop […]

WSU startup receives NSF research grant

A startup company launched by WSU physicist Matthew McCluskey received a $740,000 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase-II grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to continue the research and development of a new affordable and easy-to-use microscope. Klar Scientific designs and manufactures an innovative spectroscopic confocal optical profile (COP) microscope, which collects

Researchers estimate magma under supervolcano

WSU geologists have found a new way to estimate how fast magma is recharging beneath the Yellowstone supervolcano. Scientists now have a better understanding of a key factor of what’s underneath the massive caldera: a pool of basalt magma continually recharging the system. “It is the coal in the furnace that’s

Mellon Foundation funds digital archiving project

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded $42,000 to migrate the Electronic Literature Organization’s (ELO) archives to an open-source repository system that ensures their preservation and public accessibility. Much of the archiving and documentation will take place at WSU Vancouver’s Electronic Literature Lab, under the leadership of Professor Dene Grigar, director of the lab. WSU Vancouver […]

Physics research heads to International Space Station

WSU physicists have a new laboratory in outer space. On May 20, the Cold Atom Laboratory (CAL), a remotely operated research platform, blasted off for the International Space Station (ISS) where it will be used by researchers to probe quantum phenomena that would be impossible to observe on Earth. Professor Peter Engels and graduate student […]

Hydrologist earns NSF CAREER award

Kevan Moffett, assistant professor of environmental hydrology at WSU Vancouver, has earned a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Program award from the National Science Foundation. Highly competitive, ‘CAREER’ awards emphasize the importance of developing academic careers in which the excitement of research is enhanced by inspired teaching and dissemination of new knowledge. Moffett’s research explores […]