Few things are more rewarding for graduate engineering students at Oregon State than a research partnership with a national laboratory. The highly motivated students who come to these facilities are rewarded for their ambition and hard work with unique mentoring opportunities and access to the world’s most advanced scientific equipment, including supercomputers and particle accelerators.

The U.S. Department of Energy has 17 national labs scattered across the United States. The labs are dedicated to finding innovative solutions to the world’s most urgent scientific challenges.

With the recent acquisition of an ambient-pressure X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy system (AP-XPS), Oregon State University’s surface characterization laboratory has become a major resource for materials researchers. The instrument is the first of its kind in the United States to incorporate an ambient-pressure scanning tunneling microscope (AP-STM), which enables atomic-scale surface imaging. The acquisition integrates research capabilities in ways that are unmatched by any other institution in the country.

Lynza Sprowl, a Ph.D. student in chemical engineering, uses supercomputer resources at Argonne National Laboratory to perform computational molecular studies on battery anodes chemistries.

Graduate students Anindita Borah (seated) and Kamala Raghavan work with the equipment donated by Tektronix. Watching are Tejasvi Anand (far right), assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Tom Weiss, strategic account manager at Tektronix.

When a major earthquake occurs, such as the predicted event along the Cascadia Subduction Zone off the Pacific Northwest coast, aging infrastructure will pose significant challenges to lifeline providers, including power utilities, transportation departments, water utilities, fuel providers, and ports. Lifeline providers in the region are working to develop preparedness and emergency response plans, but cost estimates reach into the billions and they are forced to make hard decisions about how to prioritize competing concerns and allocate limited resources.

Nuclear engineering graduate students Aaron Reynolds (left) and Sean O’Brien troubleshoot data acquisition hardware on the Transient Reactor Test Loop (TRTL) facility at Oregon State. The TRTL supports funded research related to the restart of the Transient Reactor Test Facility at Idaho National Laboratory.

Idaho National Laboratory is the premier nuclear research lab in the country and maintains close ties with Oregon State. The selection of Oregon State graduate students Ari Foley and Musa Moussaoui as two of the inaugural class of INL Graduate Fellows promises to continue strengthening the partnership.  They will be contributing to nuclear nonproliferation and security programs as well as next-generation nuclear power technology.

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