CBEE

Photos by Johanna Carson and Karl Maasdam

Jeff Nason has been named head of the College of Engineering’s School of Chemical, Biological, and Environmental Engineering. His appointment took effect March 1.

Photo by Shivani Jinger

For Rylee Marks, an Honors College student who will earn her bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering this year, the plan was always straightforward: finish college, enter industry.

“I thought, I’m going to spend four years getting my degree,” Marks said. “After four years, I’m going to industry, working in energy consulting.”

The National Science Foundation has selected Oregon State University as one of 16 research institutions to receive Phase 1 grants for the 2023 Convergence Accelerator program’s Track I: Sustainable Materials for Global Challenges, a $11.5 million investment targeting a global need for critical materials in infrastructure, health care, national security, and energy.

Oregon State University’s new maps of 30-year U.S. climate “normals” show the area east of the Rockies is getting wetter, the Southwest is getting drier, and temperatures are inching upward – with daily lows rising faster than daily highs.

“When we publish the new normals every 10 years, we’re taking away one decade from a 30- year period and adding another, which means the changes we see are subtle,” said Chris Daly, professor of geospatial climatology and the founding director of Oregon State’s PRISM Climate Group.

Four faculty in the Oregon State University College of Engineering have received prestigious early-career investigator awards from the National Science Foundation and the Department of Energy. Houssam Abbas, Yue Cao, and Xiao Fu are the recipients of the Faculty Early Career Development, or CAREER, awards from the NSF.

Kelsey Stoerzinger, assistant professor of chemical engineering, has been granted an award from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Early Career Research Program.

Two engineering graduate students at Oregon State University and one recent alum have been selected as fellows in the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program.

Before joining the College of Engineering in 2021 as an assistant professor of bioengineering, Heidi Kloefkorn had mastered the art of pursuing multiple interests. No wonder she was drawn to the field of biomedical engineering.

Brynn Olden, B.S. chemical engineering ’13, and Anthony Amsberry, B.S. bioengineering ’13, had big plans in high school. Olden, in Wilsonville, wrote them down for a Spanish class assignment. In translation, she said — I will be a scientist, cure cancer, and win a Nobel Prize. Just 15 miles away in Beaverton, Amsberry was aiming at medical school.

Their paths converged at Oregon State University, where they became classmates and friends, and where each tallied an impressive record of internships, research, scholarships, and service. Both graduated summa cum laude in 2013.

Imagine someday you could have a backup copy of your heart or liver, grown from your own stem cells and ready to transplant, just waiting in cold storage should you ever need it. While that technology doesn’t yet exist, new research from the College of Engineering is paving the way toward a key prerequisite: The ability to preserve living tissues indefinitely.