Oregon State University is a dynamic community of dreamers, doers, problem-solvers and change-makers. We don’t wait for challenges to present themselves — we seek them out and take them on. We welcome students, faculty and staff from every background and perspective into a community where everyone feels seen and heard. We have deep-rooted mindfulness for the natural world and all who depend on it, and together, we apply knowledge, tools and skills to build a better future for all.
Just one faulty gene can mean the difference between a healthy respiratory system or one marked by lung dehydration and mucous buildup blocking airways. Cystic fibrosis, a progressive genetic disorder, afflicts 30,000 people in the U.S., with a median life expectancy of just 40 years.
Now, gene therapy to fight the disease is getting a boost from a novel source: plants.
Gaurav Sahay, assistant professor of pharmaceutical sciences in the Oregon State College of Pharmacy, is exploring gene therapies using phytosterols — plant-based relatives of cholesterol — that change the shape of nanoparticles to help chemically modified genes get where they need to be inside cells. This nanoparticle approach causes cells to create the proteins needed to properly regulate chloride and water transport critical to healthy respiratory function.
Sahay’s findings could be used to make inhalable particles that can cross several barriers in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, enabling them to be treated with much greater efficacy. That has the potential to help thousands of people breathe easier.
Learn more, here.
He had his future all planned out — only to see unexpected roadblocks fall in his path. But Oregon State Ecampus gave Griffie the foundation to follow the route he was always meant to travel.
A standout soccer player, Griffie long dreamed of playing for the Beavers and studying engineering on the Corvallis campus. But a diagnosis of ulcerative pancolitis — a painful illness similar to Crohn’s disease — forced him to put his soccer goals aside and place school on hold.
He didn’t back down. After digging deep, finding — then reevaluating — what he wanted out of life, Griffie realized business and marketing were a better match for his interests and talents. He put his creativity to work and launched what became a successful photography business in Portland, then enrolled fully online in the Ecampus business administration program.
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Ana Spalding, the first Marine Studies Initiative faculty hire in the College of Liberal Arts, found her own way to combine a lifelong love for the ocean with teaching and research that integrates perspectives from the humanities and the natural and social sciences.
Oregon State’s new bachelor’s degree in marine studies “is a degree I would have done as an undergrad,” Spaulding says. She’s now leading students along a similar path, taking an interdisciplinary approach to the complex issues facing marine ecosystems and coastal communities.
Learn more, here.
Most of us flip light switches and plug in appliances and think nothing of it when they turn on or off.
Adam Schultz does think about it. He works to make sure the nation’s power grid — the critical infrastructure behind those switches and plugs — is protected from potential natural and human-made threats.
Schultz, a professor in Oregon State’s College of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences, is the principal investigator on a four-year project to carry out large-scale mapping of the electrical properties of the Earth’s crust and mantle beneath the southern and southwestern United States for the U.S. Geological Survey.
More than two-thirds of the contiguous 48 states in the U.S., as well as parts of Alaska, have already been mapped by Schultz’s lab, and the new project will fill a significant gap of knowledge. Oregon State’s National Geoelectromagnetic Facility is the largest facility for this type of measurement in the world, making the university a natural fit for the work.
Learn more, here.
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